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By LYMAN P. POWELL 



The Emmanuel Movement 
Christian Science 
Heavenly Heretics 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 

THE FAITH AND ITS FOUNDER 

' J 

BY -v/ 

LYMAN P/POWELL 

President of Hobart College 



SECOND EDITION 
WITH A NEW FOREWORD 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

^be fcnicfierbocfier pre66 
1917 






Copyright, 1907 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

Published, December, 1907 
Reprinted, April, 1908; October, 1909 



Copyright, 1917 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
For Second Edition 



MAR 28 1917 



Ube f^nfcfictbocTier Press, lkc\9 J^orlt 

©CI.A457677 



PREFACE 

/CHRISTIAN SCIENCE has long en- 
^•^ gaged my interest. For years I dis- 
couraged none who sought its heahng 
ministry. The undiscriminating censure visited 
upon it in apparent ignorance or prejudice 
made no impression on me. The desire Chris- 
tian Scientists were constantly expressing to 
be judged by their fruits seemed to me to be 
both Christian and scientific. 

A year or two ago, however, closer observa- 
tion and more serious consideration brought 
me to three conclusions which appear to me 
unquestionably true: 

1. That when members of any Christian 
church turn to Christian Science healing they 
usually turn away from historic Christianity. 

2. That there are in the theory of Chris- 
tian Science certain structural weaknesses 
which may easily be overlooked by people 
unschooled in philosophy, theology, or science. 

3. That the answers of the accredited ex- 
ponents of the movement to the criticisms 

iii 



IV 



Preface 



which are steadily gaining headway satisfy 
none save Christian Scientists and such others 
as read carelessly and think loosely. 

This volume grew out of a booklet of 
mine which was never regularly pubHshed, but 
for which there soon came to be a large demand 
from all parts of the country. It was at the 
suggestion, altogether unexpected, of G. P. 
Putnam's Sons that I have expanded the 
monograph into a book. 

My purpose, as the reader will discover, has 
been to write a book in which the average man 
who is outside of Christian Science can find 
the things he wants to know about its theory 
and practice. If to my readers it may now 
and then appear that I unduly emphasise the 
defects of the system, I ask them to observe 
that the good in Christian Science is the good 
in other religions and therefore requires no 
special emphasis, while the evil is distinctive 
and needs analysis and publicity to make it 
evident. 

In studying the theory of Christian Science 
I have read various editions of Science and 
Healthy covering its entire development, to- 
gether with other writings of Mrs. Eddy, and 
the literature, now abundant, both in explana- 
tion and in criticism of the system. To read- 



Preface v 

ing I have added interviews and correspond- 
ence with representative apologists and critics 
of the movement. 

In considering Mrs. Eddy's personal his- 
tory, I have made free use of Georgine Mil- 
mine's articles in McClure's, I have taken 
the pains, however, in each instance to verify 
her statements by correspondence or by inter- 
views with those concerned. For this purpose 
alone I have travelled more than twenty-five 
hundred miles and am glad to be able to testify 
to the singular accuracy of the articles and 
the thoroughness with which they have been 
prepared. 

In the chance that there might be witnesses 
whom Georgine Milmine overlooked to con- 
tradict the witnesses she introduces in the open 
court of a great magazine, I took counsel with 
the Committee on Publication of the Christian 
Science organisation. He referred me to the 
author of the Human Life articles on the same 
subject, but I was no more fortunate with her 
than with the Committee. I am, therefore, 
satisfied, so far as it is possible to be, that there 
is no significant evidence to offset the evidence 
presented in McClure's, 

To name all who have in one way or another 
helped me in my work would be impossible. 



VI 



Preface 



But I must at least mention the following to 
whom I am especially indebted: Mr. Alfred 
Farlow, Mrs. Benjamin Welles, Mr. George 
A. Quimby, Mr. F. W. Peabody, Professor 
R. W. Micou, Rev. Dr. C. E. Holmes, Rev. 
Dr. A. E. Dunning, Mr. George Perry Mor- 
ris, Mr. Horatio W. Dresser, Dr. A. M. 
Gushing, Mr. Livingston Wright, Rev. John 
Snyder, Rev. Wm. L. Chaffin, Mr. Robert K. 
Shaw, Rev. Dr. J. M. Buckley, Rev. Dr. 
S. A. Eliot, Rev. Dr. E. H. Delk, Mr. 
Richard Kennedy, Mr. Daniel H. Spofford, 
Mrs. Sarah G. Crosby, Mrs. Julia Russell 
Walcott, Mr. H. T. Wentworth, Mrs. Joseph 
French Johnson, Mrs. S. A. K. Robinson, 
Miss Florence Ben-Oliel, Mr. Henry B. 
Hinckley, Dr. John B. Huber, Dr. John 
S. Hitchcock, Dr. Elmer H. Copeland, and 
the librarians of Northampton, Springfield, 
and Worcester, Massachusetts. 

To my wife, Gertrude Wilson Powell, I am 
under the deepest obligation for many aids 
which she alone could give. To the editorial 
skill of my nephew, Harold Ayres Powell, I 
owe much for a searching criticism of the 
manuscript. To Dr. Talcott Wilhams I am 
grateful, as often in the past, for the use of his 
comprehensive collection of magazine articles 



Preface vil 

and newspaper clippings which cover practi- 
cally every subject of human interest, and can 
nowhere be duplicated. 

Christian Scientists will say as usual that the 
truths of Christian Science are self -authenti- 
cating, and that another critic has, in under- 
taking to set forth the case, missed the essential 
point. But others will, I trust, believe that 
I have brought to one of the most elusive 
problems of the time a truth-seeking spirit, 
and that whether all my conclusions stand or 
not, the variety of quotation from Christian 
Science writings and the definiteness and com- 
prehensiveness of the facts presented will con- 
vince people that it is perilous to commit 
themselves to this crude faith, which is repudi- 
ated with indignation by historic Christianity 
and with contempt by science, without a clearer 
understanding than is common of its insecure 
foundations and its inevitable implications. 

L. P. P. 

St. John's Rectory, 
Northampton, Mass. 
August 20, 1907. 



FOREWORD TO SECOND EDITION 

THEN years ago the central interest of the 
'■' reading public was Christian Science. A 
novel cult seemed suddenly to take the center 
of the stage and its founder and leader to 
become the subject of more discussion than 
any woman of her time, perhaps of modern 
days. 

Clergymen were obliged to take heed of 
the movement because some of their members 
in many places drifted off to Christian Science. 
As rector of the parish in Northampton, 
where the church is almost at the heart of the 
Smith College campus, my turn came. Dur- 
ing the winter of 1906 a few members of my 
flock became interested in Christian Science. I 
encouraged them to accept any help it appeared 
to offer without abandoning their Church. 
When I found it seemed impossible for them 
to get help from Christian Science and remain 
Episcopalians I myself began to look into 
the subject. Of Science and Health I made 
about as little as many others who were then 
attempting from the outside to read the book. 



IX 



X Foreword 

The Rev. Dr. William H. Van Allen directed 
me toward several books of a polemical char- 
acter on the subject, and his well-known op- 
position to Christian Science he stated with 
his usual clearness and conviction. 

During the year that followed I read practi- 
cally everything in print on the subject on 
either side of the Atlantic. My first reflections 
went into a booklet I prepared for my own 
parish. Then as magazines like McClure^s 
began to publish original studies of Mrs. 
Eddy, my booklet grew into this book. At 
that time, there was, perhaps, overmuch both 
of fulsome adulation and extreme condemna- 
tion of the movement and its founder. No 
one seemed disposed to be judicial minded. 
The McClure's articles were easily the most 
exhaustive as to facts; some of their infer- 
ences from the same were not convincing. 
Sibyl Wilbur's biography gave no evidence 
either of much first-hand study of the facts 
or of value as an interpretation of the same. 

My ambition grew to produce a book which 
would steer a course between extremists of 
both types, a book authoritative as to facts, 
judicial and fair-minded in their exposition. 
When it appeared ten years ago, reviewers 
generally gave the author credit for honesty of 



Foreword xi 

purpose. The Springfield Republican said 
that the book was "not the less destructive 
for its moderation and fairness." The Out- 
look spoke as follows: "Mr. Powell's book will 
not be satisfactory to the advocates of Chris- 
tian Science, because it does not advocate 
Christian Science; it will not be satisfactory 
to the assailants of Christian Science, because 
it does not assail Christian Science. It ought 
to be satisfactory to those who wish a fair- 
minded and judicial interpretation of Christian 
Science by one who is neither its assailant nor 
its defender." 

These ten years past there has been some 
reason to believe that the book has maintained 
its place in the literature of the subject. Of 
course my many Christian Science friends 
think I am mistaken. My Christian friends 
as frankly say that with the facts set forth by 
me I might properly have been less judicial. 

Whatever value the book still has arises, I 
think, from an honest effort to find the proper 
place for Christian Science in the history of 
religion and medicine. No one has had any 
excuse since the book appeared to confuse New 
Thought, Mental Science, or other healing 
cults with Christian Science. The Emmanuel 
Movement was an effort highly successful in 



xii Foreword 

the circumstances to show that people can 
get all the good there is in Christian Science 
without leaving their own minister or doctor; 
and though the term has disappeared, the 
philosophy and methods of the Emmanuel 
Movement seem to have been adopted the 
whole country over both by churches and by 
physicians, who have used with more con- 
sciousness the principle of suggestion, which 
every successful doctor has always used in 
one way or another. 

In the years that followed the appearance of 
this book the author studied psychotherapy 
in all of its relationships, wrote several other 
books upon the general subject of psycho- 
therapy, many magazine articles, and at last 
abandoned special interest simply because 
what had been an avocation was encroaching 
upon his vocation and also because the sub- 
ject seemed to be too well understood to need 
more explanation. Looking back across the 
years Christian Science still seems to be what 
it is pictured in this book, — suggestion rein- 
forced by a profound but very unconvincing 
theology. 

Meanwhile Mrs. Eddy has died, and as 
Mark Twain predicted both in private letters 
to me and in his well-known book on Chris- 



Foreword xiii 

tian Science, the Board of Directors have suc- 
ceeded to her authority. So far as it is 
possible to tell the Directors have exercised 
the same with caution and efficiency. Some 
of the bizarre and extravagant Interests in 
Christian Science are no longer stressed. It is 
not the habit of Christian Scientists to dis- 
avow outgrown beliefs. They simply stop 
talking about them. Certain views which 
Invited much ridicule ten years ago are rarely 
mentioned In these days and only by a 
few. 

But the appreciation of the virtues of the 
Christian Scientists set forth frankly in this 
book still stands. In the last ten years 
Christian Science has certainly encouraged 
daily Bible reading, until now Christian 
Scientists are probably the most assiduous 
Bible readers In the world. They still avoid 
antagonisms. They keep singularly serene. 
They average high in other-worldliness. It 
looks as though the cult were profiting by 
experience and endeavouring to make the most 
of the spiritual reality which those who study 
far into the movement easily discover. 

The criticisms offered In the book in general 
remain. Nothing has happened in the years 
that have followed Its first appearance to 



xiv Foreword 

shake them. But a somewhat different slant 
has certainly in some quarters been given to 
the Christian Science movement. A new 
adaptability has been shown by the manage- 
ment. The Christian Science Monitor has 
proved the power of the movement to develop 
a daily paper as reliable as it is clean, and 
barring the persistence still marked in some 
places to discourage an appeal which the 
author believes should be made to the 
physician, there would seem to be no ex- 
cuse for what once looked like persecution of 
the Christian Scientists. Of course men like 
the late Professor William James, who in the 
interest of fair play would allow the Christian 
Scientist or anybody else to treat any disease, 
can no longer maintain themselves. It is the 
duty of the state to see that where there is 
good reason to believe that only a doctor can 
save life, no one else should be allowed to 
practise medicine. The author stands firm 
by this position. 

Those who believe in Christian unity must 
continue to regret that during these years, 
culminating in the recent suggestions of the 
Vatican, of renewed interest in Christian 
unity, the theology of Christian Science would 
seem to be a barrier as insuperable to Christian 



Foreword xv 

unity as its therapeutics is a challenge to 
scientific medicine. 

However in this matter as in all others 
light rather than heat is indicated. If Chris- 
tian Scientists and historic Christians will but 
keep their tempers toward each other and try 
to get together at least in Christian love, the 
time may come when the Christian Church 
will absorb a Christian Science rid of certain 
of its dogmas. 

This certainly must be if there is even the 
slightest justification for the words which 
Mark Twain wrote awhile before he died: "the 
thing back of it is wholly gracious and beauti- 
ful; the power, through loving mercifulness 
and compassion, to heal fleshly ills and pains 
and griefs — all — with a word, with a touch of 
the hand! This power was given by the 
Saviour to the Disciples, and to all the con- 
verted. All — every one. It was exercised for 
generations afterwards. Any Christian who 
was in earnest and not a make-believe, not a 
policy-Christian, not a Christian for revenue 
only, had that healing power, and could cure 
with it any disease or any hurt or damage 
'possible to human flesh and hone. These 
things are true, or they are not. If they were 
true seventeen and eighteen and nineteen 



xvi Foreword 

centuries ago It would be difficult to satisfac- 
torily explain why or how or by what argument 
that power should be non-existent in Chris- 



tians now. " 



Lyman P. Powell. 



HoBART College, Geneva, N. Y., 
January 15, 19 17. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY 



PAGES 



A Strained Relationship — The Cause — Aim of Chris- 
tian Science — Its Criticism of the Churches — Mrs. Eddy's 
Purpose — Conscientious Proselyting — The Virtues of the 
Scientists — Weakness of Christian Churches — The 
Danger Point 1-11 

CHAPTER II 

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 

Source of its Authority — Takes Precedence of the 
Bible — ^Exorbitant Selling Price — Its Healing Power — 
Relationship to New Thought Literature — Faults of Style 
— Value as a Commentary on the Bible — Fantastic 
Exegesis — Element of Peril — How it Differs from the 
Bible — The House upon the Sand 12-27 

CHAPTER in 

THE SOURCE OF ITS IDEAS 

Modem Claim of their OriginaUty — The Conflict with 
the Author's Earlier Words — The Quimby Panegyrics — 
Teaching Quimbyism — Cooling Gratitude — Absolute 
Disavowals — Mesmeric Explanations — Crux of the Sit- 
uation — 1862 versus 1888 — Quimby's Scrap-book — Dr. 
Evans's Testimony — Incapacity of Mrs. Eddy's Modern 

Witnesses — The Deadly Parallel 28-49 

xvii 



xviii Contents 

CHAPTER IV 

THE FOUNDER OP THE FAITH 

The World when she was Born — Childhood — Envu-on- 
ment and Education — First Marriage in 1843 — Widow- 
hood and Invalidism — Second Marriage in 1853 — Visit in 
1862 to Quimby — His Healing System — Mrs. Eddy's 
Great Mistake — The " Final Revelation" in 1866— Sepa- 
ration from her Second Husband and Divorce — Profes- 
sional Visiting — Partnership in Lynn with Richard 
Kennedy in 1870 — Established as a Healer — Relationship 
with D. H. Spofford— The Docile Mr. Eddy— Third Mar- 
riage — Christian Science Organised in 1875 — Removed 
in 1881 to Boston — Court and Cabinet — College and 
Church — To Concord in 1889 — Christian Science To-day 
— An Astonishing Autocrat — The Manual — The Mod- 
ern Mona Lisa — Her Virtues and her Faults. . . 50-107 

CHAPTER V 

THE PHILOSOPHY 

A Phase of Idealism — Mrs. Eddy Makes a Revelation 
of it — The Battle Cry of Christian Science — The Ques- 
tion of Reality — Christian Science neither Christian 
nor Scientific — The Practical Objection — Difficulties 
of Apologists — Soul Senses — Mrs. Eddy's Isolation — 
An Unanswerable Criticism — No Room for Evolution 
— A Grave Indictment — Timely Illustrations of its 
Philosophical Anarchy 108-134 

CHAPTER VI 

THE RELIGION AND THEOLOGY 

God All-in-all — Principle not Personality — From 
Pantheism into Dualism — The Trinity — Christian 
Science is the Holy Spirit — The Incarnation an Exag- 
gerated Nestorianism — Deifying Mrs. Eddy — Prayer 
Declaration not Petition — Abandoning the Sacraments 
— Substitution of a Breakfast for the Lord's Supper — 
Evil no Real Existence — The Absurd Obsession of Ani- 
mal Magnetism 135-168 



Contents xix 

PAGES 

CHAPTER VII 

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 

The Supreme Test of Christian Science — Mrs. Eddy's 
Claim that Christian Science Cures All Diseases — Her 
Followers' Attitude — Venturesome Experiments — Con- 
cessions to Pubhc Opinion — Inadequate Diagnoses — All 
Tests Dechned — Mrs. Eddy's Attack upon the Doctors 
— Reply of Medicine and Surgery — Healing by Under- 
standing of the Christian Science Theory — Practical 
Illustrations — Chemicalisation — Jesus' Way ^—Mental ■"" 
HeaUng through the Centuries — Pseudo-Scientific and 
True Scientific Mental Healing — Principle Common to 
Both — The Possibihties and Limitations of Suggestion 
— Christian Science Admits no Limitations — Consequent 
Need of State Regulation— The Duty to the Truth. 169-202 

CHAPTER Vin 

MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY 

The Gravest Defect — Christian Science Ascetic — Mrs. 
Eddy's Testimony Prompted by her Personal Experience 
— Denies the Sacramental Use of Matter — Misinter- 
prets Jesus' Words — Teaches Possibihty of Race Perpet- 
uation without Marriage — Some Explanations which 
do not Explain — Simultaneous Contradictions — The 
Testimony of the Manual and the Lesson Quarterly — 
Public Opinion Making Ready for a Final Judgment 
— The Alternative — Duty of the Hour. . . 203-220 

Notes 221-252 

Index , 253-261 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

This bibliography does not profess to be complete. It 
includes in fact only those books and other writings which 
have proved useful in the preparation of this volume. 
The current literature on Christian Science is too abun- 
dant for mention of more than the most significant maga- 
zine articles. The arrangement is made with respect to 
the special needs of those who may desire to read sys- 
tematically in explanation, in commendation, or in criti- 
cism of the movement. 

BOOKS BY MRS. EDDY 

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Boston, 
editions of 1875, 1881,1883, 1888, 1898, 1905, 1906. 
Miscellaneous Writings. Boston, 1902. 
Retrospection and Introspection. Boston, 1900. 
Pulpit and Press. Boston, 1905. 
No and Yes. Boston, 1906. 
Rudimental Divine Science. Boston, 1906. 
Christian Science versus Pantheism. Boston, 1906. 
Unity of Good. Boston, 1906. 
Christ and Christinas. Boston, 1906. 
Church Manual. Boston, 1906. 

PAMPHLETS BY CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS 

Farlow, Alfred. A Critic Answered. 

Fluno, F. J. Christian Science; A Reasonable and Ra- 

tional View of all Things. 
Hanna, S. J. Christian Science History. 

Healing through Christian Science. 

Christian Science and Legislation, 

XX 



Bibliography xxi 

Hering, H. S. Christian Science: Humanity's Helper, 
Kimball, E. A. Christian Science and Legislation. 
Norton, Carol. The Christian Science Church: Its 

Organisation and Polity. 
Robinson, Henry. A Biographical Sketch of Rev. Mary 

Baker G. Eddy. 
Smith, C. P. Christian Science and Legislation. 

CURRENT LITERATURE FAVOURABLE TO 
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 

Beman, S. S., in The World To-day, June, 1907. 
Brisbane, Arthur, in The Cosmopolitan, August, 1907. 
BuRNHAM, Clara Louise, in The World To-day, February, 

1907. 
Dunmore, Earl of, in The Cosmopolitan, March, 1907. 
Eddy, Mrs., in The Independent, Nov. 22, 1906. 
EwiNG, Wm. G., in Success, June, 1907. 
Farlow, Alfred, in Government, May, 1907. 
Flower, B. 0., in The Arena, January, 1907. 
Johnston, W. A., in The Broadway Magazine, May, 1907. 
Kimball, E. A., in The Cosmopolitan, May, 1907. 
Klein, Charles, in The Cosmopolitan, January, 1907. 

in The Arena, May, 1907. 

McCracken, W. D., in The Arena, May, 1907. 
Mattox, W. S., in The American Queen, May, 1907. 
MiMS, Sue H., in Success, May, 1907. 
MosLEY, J. R., in The Cosmopolitan, July, 1907. 

1907. 
Wilbur, Sibyl, in Human Life, serial beginning January, 

1907. 
T'^iLLis, John B., in The Arena, July. 
Yates, Katherine M., in The American Queen, March. 
The list of daily papers will not be given. 

BOOKS OF CRITICISM OR APPRAISAL 

Buckley, J. M. , Christian Science and Other Super- 
stitions. New York, 1902. 



xxii Bibliography 

BuRRELL, J. D., A New Appraisal of Christian Science. 
New York, 1906. 

Casson, H. N., The Crime of Credulity. New York, 1901. 

Clark, Gordon, The Church of Saint Bunco. New York, 
1901. 

Clemens, S. L. (Mark Twain), Christian Science. New 
York, 1907. 

COE, George A., The Spiritual Life, Ch. IV. New York, 
1900. 

CUSHMAN, H. E., The Truth in Christian Science. Bos- 
ton, 1902. 

Dresser, A. G., The Philosophy of P, P, Quimby. Bos- 
ton, 1895. 

Dresser, H. W., Health and the Inner Life. New York, 
1906. 

, Methods and Problems of Spiritual Healing. 

New York, 1899. 

Dresser, Julius A., The True History of Mental Science. 
New York, 1899. 

Farnsworth, Edward C, in The Arena, July. 

GODDARD, H. H., The Effects of Mind on Body, as Evi- 
denced by Faith Cures. American Journal of Psy- 
chology, volume X, 1899. 

Hutchinson, Oliver W., Christian Science. Leominster, 

Mass., 1906. 
James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 

Chs. IV and V, New York, 1902. 

Micou, R. W., Outline Notes on Fundamental Theology 
and Christian Apologetics. Alexandria, Va., 1902. 

MuLDOON, W. H., Christian Science Claims Unscientific 
and TJn-ChristiaiR Brooklyn Eagle Library, 51. 
March, 1901. 

Newton, R. Heber, Christian Science. New York, 1898. 

OuGHTON, C. M., Crazes, Credulities, and Christian Sci- 
ence, Chicago, 1901. 

Parmelee, Mary Platt, Christian Science. New York, 
1904. 

Patterson, C. B., The Will to be Well. New York, 1907. 



Bibliography xxiii 

Peabody, F. W., Complete Exposure of Eddyism or 

Christian Science. Boston, 1907. 
Powell, L. P., The Anarchy of Christian Science. North- 
ampton, Mass., 1906. 
Searchlights on Christian Science. New York, 1899. 
Shinn, G. W., Some Modern Substitutes for Christianity. 

New York, 1896. 
Snyder, John, A Little Journey in Christian Science. 

Boston, 1907. 
Sturge, M. Carta, The Truth and Error of Christian 

Science. New York, 1903. 
Wood, Henry, The New Thought Simplified. Boston, 

1903. 
Wright, Livingston, How Rev. Wiggin Rewrote Mrs. 

Eddy's Book. Reprinted from the New York World, 

1906. 

OTHER WRITINGS USED OR CITED 

Barker, Lewellys F., The Nervous System. New York, 

1899. 
Bernheim, Le Dr., De la Suggestion. Paris, 1888. 
Bramwell, J. Milne, Hypnotism, its History, Practice, 

and Theory. London, 1903. 
Campbell, R. J., The New Theology. New York, 1907. 
Case, C. D., The Masculine in Religion. Philadelphia, 

1907. 
Dresser, H. W., The Facts of the Case. The Arena, May, 

1899. 
Dubois, Paul, The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Dis- 
orders. New York, 1906. 
,The Influence of the Mind on the Body, New 

York, 1906. 
Evans, W. F., Mental Medicine. Boston, 1872 and 1874. 
Farrar, F. W., The Bible: Its Meaning and Supremacy. 

New York, 1897. 
Frothingham, O. B., Transcendentalism in New England. 

New York, 1876. 
Hopkins, H. R., The Prognosis in Eddyism, in American 

Medical Quarterly, January, 1900. 



xxiv Bibliography 

Hudson, T. J., The Law of Mental Medicine, 

Huxley, T. H., on The Miraculous, in The Nineteenth 

Century, March, 1899. Chicago, 1903. 
Keen, W. W., Surgery, in The Progress of the Century. 

New York, 1901. 
Lane-Poole, Stanley, The Speeches and Table-Talk of 

the Prophet Mohammed. London, 1882. 
Leonard, W. J., Warren Felt Evans, in Practical Ideals, 

1905-6. 
Lodge, Sir Oliver, The Substance of Faith Allied with 

Science. New York, 1907. 

Milmine, Georgine, Mary Baker G. Eddy. McClure's 

Magazine, serial beginning January, 1907. 
Moll, Albert, Hypnotism. New York, 1894. 
More, Paul Elmer, The Great Refusal. Boston and 

New York, 1894. j , 

MussER, John H. A Practical Treatise on Medical 

Diagnosis. Philadelphia, 1900. 
Myers, F. W. H., Human Personality, 2 vols. New York, 

1903. 
Osler, William, The Principles and Practice of Medicine, 

New York, 1892. 
, Medicine in The Progress of the Century. New 

York, 1901. 
QuiMBY, George A., Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, in The 

New England Magazine, March, 1888. 
Richardson, T. H., Race Suicide and Christian Science, 

in The Canadian Journal of Medicine and Surgery. 

Toronto, October, 1906. 
Schofield, a. T., a Study of Faith Healing. New 

York. 

, Nerves in Disorder, New York, 1903. 

Seaman, Major L. L., on the Japanese Army Medical 

Service, in Review of Reviews, Nov. 1905. 
The Spectator, Feb. 16 and 23, 1907, The Power of 

Suggestion. 
Suzuki, S., Sanitation of the Japanese Navy, in Review 

of Reviews, Nov., 1905. 



Bibliography xxv 

Taylor, J. Madison, Drugs and their Abuses, in Popular 

Science Monthly, May, 1907. 
Thomson, W. H., Brain and Personality. New York, 

1907. 
TuCKEY, C. Lloyd, Treatment by Hypnotism and Sugges- 
tion. New York, 1907. 
Ward, Mrs. Humphrey, The History of David Grieve. 

New York, 1892. 
Wood, Irving F., The Spirit of God in Biblical Literature. 

New York, 1904. 
Woodbury, J. C, The Book and the Woman, in The Arena, 

May, 1899. 
Zechandelaer, Dr., Suggestion, in The Hollandsche 

Revue, 1907. 
Zola, Emile, Lourdes. London, 1903. 

To this list should be added the collection of newspaper 
clippings and magazine articles of Dr. Talcott Williams 
of Philadelphia, to which reference is made in the Preface. 



I 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 



CHAPTER I 

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND HISTORIC 
CHRISTIANITY 

A Strained Relationship — The Cause — Aim of Christian 
Science — Its Criticism of the Churches — Mrs. Eddy's 
Purpose — Unconscious Proselyting — The Virtues of 
the Scientists — Weakness of Christian Churches — 
The Danger Point. 

T F there is to-day a strained relationship be- 
^ tween historic Christianity and Christian 
Science, the fault chiefly, in the nature of the 
case, is with Christian Science. The facts in 
evidence are incontestable. 

Christian Science has passed through no 
such persecution as the early Church experi- 
enced. While now and then some minister 
has raised his voice or pen, he has always 
spoken for himself alone, and hot always even 
then in criticism severed from appreciation. 



2 Christian Science 

Far from any disposition to drive out the mem- 
bers of their flock turned Christian Scientists, 
most ministers have, if I may trust my observa- 
tion and inquiry, tried by kindly toleration and 
by friendly words to keep them in the fold. 
When, nevertheless, they would go out, many 
ministers have watched them go more in 
sorrow than in bitterness. 

Even a careless reader of Mrs. Eddy's books 
is obliged to see that Mrs. Eddy came not, like 
Jesus, to fulfil but to destroy. She was 
prompt in breaking with the past. The know- 
ledge she had gleaned from school books 
vanished, she remarks, when she discovered 
Christian Science.^ Between Christ and her, 
all along the intervening centuries, she hints, 
no thinker has appeared, and she quietly ob- 
serves, " The time for thinkers has come. 
Truth independent of doctrines and time- 
honoured systems, knocks at the portal of 
humanity." ^ 

Christian Science was not the culmination of 
a movement. " I have found nothing," she 
says, " in ancient or modern systems on which 
to found my own." ^ It was a revelation. No 
one had made ready for it. No one could. It 

1 Here and elsewhere the numerals in the text refer to 
notes at the end of the volume. 



^ 



And Historic Christianity 3 

flashed upon- her as soon as she was ready to 
receive it,^ and when it did it was " higher, 
clearer, and more permanent " than His revela- 
tion was to Jesus. ^ 

Though there are signs of late that some of 
her representatives do not sharply discrimi- 
nate between a revelation and an evolution, 
Mrs. Eddy's course in this regard has been 
steadily consistent. She withdrew from the 
church of her upbringing. She founded a 
church of her own. She gave to it rules and 
by-laws " impelled by a power not her own." ^ 
She claims for her text-book, which contains — 
as she states — the revelation, a place of equal 
importance with the Bible in the public ser- 
vices of her church. She calls her book 
" God's Book " and the " Book of Books." ' 
She contends that it is as truly authorised by 
Christ as is the Bible. ^ 

A quarter of a century has passed since she 
began to preach in the " Mother Church in 
Boston," and nowhere all along the years, if 
her books are a criterion, has she shown any 
disposition to affiliate with those who do not 
share her point of view and who yet believe 
that they are Christians. In spite of Mrs. 
Eddy's protest in The Independent of Nov. 
22, 1906, that she " loves the prosperity of 



4 Christian Science 

Zion, be it promoted by Catholic, by Protest- 
ant, or by Christian Science," there is no mis- 
taking what Hes back of words Hke these, 
written as long ago as 1890: 

Christian Science is the pure evangelic truth. 
It accords with the trend and tenor of Christ's 
teaching and example, while it demonstrates the 
power of Christ as taught in the four gospels. 
Truth, casting out evils and healing the sick; Love 
fulfilling the law, and keeping man unspotted from 
the world — these practical manifestations of Christi- 
anity constitute the only evangelism, and they 
need no creed.^ Outside of this science all is un- 
stable error.i^ 

She calls the faith of others blind belief rest- 
ing on the evidences of the senses rather than 
on the teaching and practice of Jesus, or the 
world of spirit.^^ She hints that her sense, 
whatever it may be, is a higher sense than 
yours or mine, and speaks outright about our 
ignorance.^^ She says that " sin makes deadly 
thrusts at the Christian Scientist, as natural- 
ism and creed are summoned to give place 
to higher law." She gives twelve pages, 
above her average in clearness, in the late edi- 
tions of Science and Health to the identifica- 
tion of modern Christians with the ancient 
Pharisees.^^ 



And Historic Christianity 5 

Men may differ about even the essentials of 
Christian faith and yet wish each other well 
so long as they beheve in one another's honesty 
of purpose. But how can there be the entente 
cordiale between historic Christianity and 
Christian Science with Mrs. Eddy falling into 
what comes close to personal abuse? 

As in Jesus' time, so to-day, tyranny and pride 
need to be whipped out of the temple, and humility 
and divine science welcomed in. The strong cords 
of scientific demonstration as twisted and wielded 
by Jesus are still needed, to purge the temples of 
their worldly policy, and make them meet dwelling 
places for the Most High.^* 

As Charles Francis Adams reminded Lord 
Russell at a memorable moment in our coun- 
try's history, this sort of thing is war, and no 
talk about love in the abstract, no injunction 
to "do good unto your enemies when the op- 
portunity comes," ^^ no protestation that Mrs. 
Eddy loves the orthodox church, can make up 
for the lack of love displayed through many of 
her writings. It is war. Mrs. Eddy pictures 
it in her parody on The Charge of the Light 
Brigade: 

" Traitors to right of them, 
M. D.'s to left of them, 
Priestcraft in front of them, 
Volleyed and thundered." ^^ 



6 Christian Science 

It is war. But as Mrs. Eddy, more accu- 
rate than she designed, describes it, war of 
her own making on those who have gone out 
from her, on doctors, and on clergymen, — 
all of whom she pictures in her doggerel as 
in an attitude, not of offence, but of vigorous 
self-defence. 

Be not deceived. Mrs. Eddy means to 
drive historic Christianity out of people's 
minds and to put her faith in place of it. 
" We can not fill vessels already full. They 
must first be emptied," ^^ she remarks. Be- 
fore she published her text-book in 1875, she 
was making it obligatory on her followers to 
break with their past, ^^ and to-day the conver- 
sion of a man or woman to Christian Science 
invariably detaches them, in thought at least, 
from the church of their first love and leads to 
their affiliation, actual if not always nominal 
at first, with the band of the like-minded. For 
a Christian Scientist, old things are passed 
away, all things are become new. 

Everywhere, the Christian Science organisa- 
tion is made up, it would seem, of those who 
have come out of Christian churches and who 
keep out of touch with other Christians, 
who interpret the embarrassment their own 
aloofness causes as distraint, charge honest in- 



And Historic Christianity 7 

quiry to unfriendliness, claim all criticism to be 
persecution, and serve year in, year out, as 
magnets, not to draw the heathen far or near, 
but to draw the discontented and the ill- 
informed from their proper church allegi- 
ance/^ 

Mistaking incoherence for illumination, they 
put into the minds of those who have perhaps 
no philosophy of life, a philosophy so difficult 
to understand that when an inquirer in all 
honesty both fails to understand and refuses to 
accept on trust, his intelligence is questioned or 
his sincerity denied. Mistaking pseudo-scien- 
tific terminology for scientific truth, they give 
to people who may be informed in everything 
but science, conceptions which would crowd 
out of even the most spacious mind every fact 
that science has discovered and every general- 
isation that science has established. Mistaking 
optimistic vagueness for Christian revela- 
tion, they allure from their allegiance the 
generous, the high-minded, and the over- 
trustful, who appearing to find in Christian 
Science relief from certain ills they thought in- 
curable, straightway forget that a little know- 
ledge is a dangerous thing and hasten on to the 
conclusion that Christian Science must be true 
in all respects because it may be true in one. 



8 Christian Science 

No one doubts the good intentions of the 
Christian Scientists. Some of the purest souls 
ahve to-day are Christian Scientists. They 
have done much good. Allowing all you will 
for exaggeration, there can be no denying that 
Christian Scientists have helped the sick, re- 
formed the drunkard, reclaimed the prodigal, 
brought surcease to many a sorrow and anxi- 
ety, tempered life's asperities, furnished a 
philosophy for every-day existence where there 
was none before, filled souls with what Charles 
Klein has called " happiness far beyond my 
wildest dreams." 

To an age grown weary and impatient of 
ecclesiasticism and machinery. Christian Sci- 
entists have brought something of the warmth 
and glow, the freshness and the spontaneity, 
the poise and the sincerity, the gladness and 
the other worldliness which suffused the Apos- 
tolic age and made it all alive with spiritual 
power.^^ 

The early Christians lived above life's fret 
and turmoil. They knew the peace which 
passeth understanding. They endured as 
seeing Him who is invisible. They lived for 
Jesus Christ and Him alone. Knit together 
** in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith 
and charity," they went out to win the world 
to Christ. 



And Historic Christianity 9 

Christians to-day in many places seem to 
have lost the Apostolic spirit. They appear 
sometimes to believe with their heads but not 
with their hearts. There is much in Christen- 
dom now to recall the situation in Rome when 
**' every man had two religions ; the one he pro- 
fessed and the other he believed." ^^ Chris- 
tian work to-day is far too often automatic. 
Christians are too prone to give everything but 
themselves to the cause they represent. For- 
getting that the good fight of faith is never 
won by hirelings, they are apt to send sub- 
stitutes in their stead and to repair to the golf 
links. Guilds and societies are frequent and 
inadequate representatives of " one holy bond 
of truth and peace, of faith and charity." 

While this is distinctively a church-build- 
ing age, it is not so clearly a church-going age. 
Men are so small a proportion of the average 
congregation that the faith is often feminised.^^ 
The Church's loss of moral leadership is every- 
where admitted. The Priest and Levite, as 
President Eliot said the other day, too often 
pass by the great evils of the age. Church 
papers now are in the stage of explanation. 
The great preachers of the new redemption of 
society are found in the White House, the cabi- 
net, and the editorial room, oftener than the 
pulpit. Far from standing together and 



lo Christian Science 

together going out, as early Christians did, to 
conquer all for Christ, the Christian Church at 
large is broken up into conflicting sects, and 
the individual church in many a place is di- 
vided into sets distrustful of one another and 
insistent on those undemocratic class distinc- 
tions which are the bane of Church and State 
alike and which make the Church, though not 
the Christ, a hissing and a by- word everywhere. 

And God, unless the signs belie Him, is 
growing weary of it all. He is saying in 
these days to many a church that will not hear 
his voice: " Bring me no more vain oblations. 
. . . Your appointed feasts my soul hateth; 
they are a trouble unto me ; I am weary to bear 
them!" "What doth the Lord require of 
thee but to do justly and to love mercy, and 
to walk humbly with thy God?"^^ There 
must be a return all along the line to Apos- 
tolic simplicity, Apostolic spontaneity. Apos- 
tolic love. Apostolic joy, and Apostolic peace. 
And Christian Science, whatever be its limita- 
tions, seems to some to blaze a way. 

Christian Science has its faults, but Chris- 
tian Scientists, whatever the demerits of their 
system, have many virtues to their credit. 
" They are sincere and filled with that moral 
enthusiasm that is a potent motor power in all 



And Historic Christianity ii 

great religious or ethical movements in their 
early days." ^* They believe in spiritual 
things, and they are as bold in uttering their 
belief as were the early Christians. There is 
never the apologetic note for which one in- 
stinctively listens in the talk of many Chris- 
tians in these days. They are protests in the 
flesh against the worldliness and the ecclesi- 
asticism which afflict the Church, and the 
materialism and lust which threaten the foun- 
dations of the social order. They furnish 
everywhere proof positive and peace-bringing, 
that where there is a will there is a way to live 
the spirit's life against all odds. 

And yet in spite of all the virtues which I 
find in Christian Scientists and more readily 
admit because I count them rather the product 
of historic Christianity than of Christian 
Science, I see in Christian Science defects 
which in time will either relegate it to the 
limbo of exploded heresies or which, should 
it possibly become the universal faith — a mani- 
fest improbability — will take from the world 
all humanity has learned in ages past, will 
write falsehood across the brow of philosophy, 
science, and religion, and will give us in the 
place of what we have, the inheritance of the 
centuries, some sort of anarchy. 



CHAPTER II 

SCIENCE AND HEALTH 

Source of its Authority — Takes Precedence of the Bible — 
Exorbitant Selling Price — Its Healing Power — Re- 
lationship to New Thought Literature — Faults of 
Style — Value as a Commentary on Bible — Fantastic 
Exegesis — Element of Peril — How it Differs From the 
Bible — The House Upon the Sand. 

A A /^HILE there is an abundant literature 
^ ^ on Christian Science, there is but one 
authentic source of information. That is Mrs. 
Eddy's monumental book, Science and Healthy 
first published in 1875, and now past its 440th 
edition. It is a portly volume of some seven 
hundred pages and more than two hundred 
thousand words. But large as is the book, its 
claim for authority is larger. The author 
gravely writes that Science and Health is " the 
voice of Truth to this age, and contains the 
whole of Christian Science." ^ The book is to 
be read at every Christian Science service in 
explanation of the Bible, and is, Mrs. Eddy 
says, through her official representatives, as 

12 



Science and Health 13 

" uncontaminated and unfettered by human 
hypotheses " as is the Bible, and as surely 
'' authorised by Christ." ^ 

But this surprising claim is modesty itself 
compared with the larger claim which Mrs. 
Eddy makes in her autobiography that Science 
and Health occupies a vantage ground which 
the Bible does not share. These are her own 
words: "The Scripture gave no direct inter- 
pretation of the Scientific basis for demonstrat- 
ing the spiritual Principle of heaUng, until our 
Heavenly Father saw fit, through the key to 
the Scriptures, in Science and Health, to un- 
lock ' this mystery of Godliness.' " ^ And then, 
as though to allay the dismay such words are 
apt to bring to those who read them first, she 
writes in 1901 : " I should blush to write of 
Science and Health, with Key to the Scrip- 
tures, as I have, were it of human origin, and 
I apart from God, its author; but as I was 
only a scribe echoing the harmonies of heaven, 
I can not be supermodest of the Christian 
Science text-book." ^ 

After this, one is not surprised to find the 
Bible yielding first place in Christian Science 
worship to the Christian Science text-book. 
It seems fitting in the light of Mrs. Eddy's 
estimate of the relative importance of the 



14 Christian Science 

Bible and her book that the Second Reader, 
not the First, should read aloud the Scripture 
texts while to the First Reader falls the more 
important task of reading the passages from 
Science and Health which are expected to ex- 
plain in full the meaning of the Bible words.^ 

But to the practical mind far more signifi- 
cant is the amazing difference in the selling 
price of the two books. The Bible with its 
million words can be bought by any one for 
fifteen cents. ^ Science and Healthy not one- 
fourth as large, sells in its least expensive form, 
for $3.18. Whether rich or poor, you must 
pay for Science and Healthy allowing for the 
difference in size of the two books, eighty times 
as much as you may pay for your Bible. The 
Bible is sold at cost in the cheaper editions. 
Science and Health in its cheapest form yields 
a profit to its author amounting probably to 
several hundred per cent. 

In quantities of one hundred thousand copies 
Science and Health can, as I am informed, 
be reproduced at a cost of from thirty to forty 
cents a copy. Mark Twain, with his life-long 
experience as both an author and a publisher, 
thinks that the cost would be much smaller 
in the case of a book like Science and Health 
*• whose market is so sure and so great that you 



Science and Health 15 

can give a printer a standing order for thirty 
or forty or fifty thousand copies a year," which 
will enable him to work at the contract " when- 
ever there is a slack time in his press-room 
and bindery." '^ In confirmation of Mark 
Twain's estimate, an easy calculation will 
clearly indicate that the weekly output of 
Science and Health is now about a thousand 
copies and a new edition is run off the press 
every two or three weeks. 

The Publication Committee, after disclaim- 
ing all specific knowledge of the facts, says 
that the Christian Science text-book is 
" printed in small quantities and with constant 
changes," that there is a profit to the publisher 
and the retailer to be taken into account, and 
that the expense of transportation is paid by 
the publisher in lots of one dozen or more.^ 

But such an explanation is not adequate. 
The cost of making the plates is the same for 
one copy as for one hundred thousand copies. 
The changes made from time to time cannot 
be considerable in a book of which there have 
been in ten years almost three hundred new 
issues, an average of almost three a month. ^ 
It is also of significance that in the preparation 
of the Bible lessons for the present quarter, 
not the 440th edition, but the 379th was used, 



1 6 Christian Science 

and " most of the references can be found," 
says the note for students of the lessons, " in 
the previous editions " back as far as the 
226th, which appeared some years ago/^ 

With full allowance for proper compensa- 
tion to the publisher, the retailer, and the 
transportation companies, there will still be 
for the author a profit of several hundred per 
cent. Mrs. Eddy has actually acknow- 
ledged in the case of Eddy versus Frye et at 
that she has an estate amounting to almost a 
million dollars,^^ most of which has doubtless 
accumulated from the sale of Science and 
Health, of which every Christian Scientist is 
obliged to circulate and sell as many copies as 
possible on pain of losing " his membership in 
the church." ^^ 

Again, Mrs. Eddy claims for her book what 
has never in all the Christian centuries been 
claimed for the Bible, that the mere reading of 
it " heals sickness constantly." The Earl 
of Dunmore, who died August 26, testifies that 
his wife was " literally snatched from the jaws 
of death through reading the Christian Science 
text-book." The palsied arm of another was 
cured by reading the single sentence " All is 
Mind." ^^ And some have claimed that one 
sentence fully understood will cure disease of 



Science and Health 17 

any sort. The spiritual atmosphere which the 
book generates, wherever and whenever it is 
read, is too rarefied to nourish long the false 
view that we are sick; therefore we get well. 

Many of the thoughts found in Science and 
Health abound in the Christian literature of 
this and of other times. Much of it is familiar 
to those who read the New Thought books of 
Henry Wood and Charles Brodie Patterson. ^"^ 
In them as well as in the Christian Science 
text-book there is insistence on the unity of 
all life and of all intelligence gathered up into 
the thought of God as " All in all." But as to 
matter, sin, and pain there is a constant and 
irreconcilable difference. The New Thought 
does not invalidate the evidence of the senses. 
The New Thought does not dodge the realities 
of hfe. The New Thought admits the actual 
existence of matter, sin, and pain, but teaches 
us to rise above them on the spirit's wings. 
Christian Science dismisses them as vain 
imaginings of mortal mind and is put to such 
shrift to deny their existence as makes Science 
and Health sometimes read, says Dr. Elwood 
Worcester, " Kke the writing of a philosopher 
suffering from acute softening of the brain." 

The difficulty is not merely with the style, 
which though often marred by absurdity, tur- 



1 8 Christian Science 

gidity, and faulty diction, possesses a certain 
lofty distinctiveness, a certain sonorous au- 
thoritativeness, which a book that claims to be 
a j'cvelation ought to have to command the 
interest of the undiscriminating. The diffi- 
culty is also with the arrangement of the work. 
There is a woful want of seciuence both in 
thought and word. The reader can begin 
anywhere and stop anywhere without serious 
loss or gain. Mrs. Kddy in one section states 
that certain of her sentences read backward 
mean as much as when read forward, and many 
not of her persuasion will readily agree with 
her. 

No matter what editions you may chance to 
be comparing, there is an unexpected insta- 
bility of arrangement in a book which the au- 
thor claims is of the nature of " final revela- 
tion." Mrs. Eddy is not content to let the 
sequence remain permanent. Of four editions 
dated, respectively, 1881, 1888, 1898, and 1906, 
the chapter which comes first in the first and 
second of the four editions comes fifth in the 
third and sixth in the fourth. The second 
chapter in the first and second editions is third 
and eighth respectively in the third and fourth. 
The third chapter in the first edition appears 
as the fifth in the second, the second in the 



Science and Health 19 

third, and the seventh in the fourth. Chapter 
IV in the first edition is Chapter XII in the 
second and XIV in the third and fourth 
editions. Chapter V in the first is IX in the 
second, XII in the third and fourth. And 
the variation lasts throughout. 

Lucidity is an honest test to apply to any 
modern Anglo-Saxon book. Those who think 
clearly and write clearly can state the truth 
to-day in terms the average mind can under- 
stand. And when normal people find men as 
high above the average as the Rev. Drs. Ly- 
man Abbot, George A. Gordon, J. M. Buck- 
ley, and Elwood Worcester differing among 
themselves as to the meaning of Science 
and Health it is not, perhaps, unreasonable 
to conclude that the responsibility rests 
not on the reader but on the author of the 
book. 

Mrs. Eddy has undoubtedly improved 
greatly in her power to express herself on pa- 
per, since her literary helper ^^ twenty years 
ago testified she was constantly confusing 
such words as physics and physiology, gnostic 
and agnostic, and putting him to his wits' end 
to save her " from making herself ridiculous 
and from flatly contradicting herself." But 
there is still some justification for Mark 



20 Christian Science 

Twain's sweeping judgment that Mrs. Eddy 
" so lacks in the matter of Hterary precision 
that she can seldom put a thought into words 
that express it lucidly to the reader and leave 
no doubts in his mind as to whether he has 
rightly understood or not." ^^ 

Philosophy is broken up to-day into three 
camps. In one, matter is regarded as the only 
reality ; in another, mind and matter seem alike 
substantial; in the third, matter is steadily 
characterised as but a form of thought. It is 
in this camp that Mrs. Eddy can be found, but 
she has a special tent. Her philosophy is a 
" crude unintelligent form of idealistic panthe- 
ism." ^^ Her purpose is to superimpose it on 
organic Christianity by making Science and 
Health the one authoritative commentary on 
the Bible. 

To the most audacious task any commenta- 
tor ever undertook Mrs. Eddy brings no- 
thing usually considered necessary to Biblical 
exegesis. She says in her autobiography that 
she learned some Greek and Hebrew when she 
was a girl. But she also says that all her child- 
hood learning " vanished like a dream " after 
her discovery of Christian Science.^^ 

If she has any quality except persistence re- 
quired in the scholar whose business it is to 



Science and Health 21 

find out what the Bible means, no matter what 
philosophy it may support, Mrs. Eddy has 
succeeded all these years in hiding it from even 
the most searching student of her book. If 
she knows anything of the real nature of the 
problems on which Biblical experts are brood- 
ing in these days she nowhere gives a sign of 
it/^ She indicated in a letter of last April 
her intention to take up the higher critic- 
ism, but at eighty-six a mind is too well-sea- 
soned to be likely to habituate itself to a 
radically different point of view. 

The fact is that she distrusts all modern 
learning, and with her approval the Mother 
Church in Boston chose for its new president, 
June 11, 1907, a man who put himself on rec- 
ord thus in his acceptance of the office: " In an 
age of so-called higher criticism, wherein the 
fundamental truths of the Bible are openly 
assailed and cast aside as impractical and 
visionary, it remains to them [Christian Scien- 
tists] to preserve for future generations the 
very integrity of the Scriptures." ^^ 

Her exegesis of specific words is but the 
reading into them of meaning necessary to 
support her strange philosophy. To oblige a 
commentator so ambitious one would believe, 
if it were possible, that Science and Health 



22 Christian Science 

contains, as its author earnestly assures us, 
" the metaphysical interpretation of Bible 
terms — giving their spiritual sense, which is 
also their original meaning." But how can 
it be possible with interpretations offered us as 
fanciful as these? ^^ 

Adam " represents the false supposition " that 
" the Infinite enters the finite." 

ArJc means " the understanding of spirit, destroy- 
ing belief in matter." 

Baptism is " submergence in Truth." 

Children are " counterfeits of creation, whose 
better originals are God's thoughts." 

Dan is " animal magnetism : so-called mortal mind 
controlling mortal mind." 

Death: " Any material evidence of death is 
false." 

Mortal Mind: "Nothing, claiming to be some- 
thing." 

Mother: " God, divine and eternal Principle, Life, 
Truth, and Love." 

New Jerusalem: " Divine Science." 

Noah: " Knowledge of the nothingness of material 
things, and the immortality of all that is spiritual." 

Will: " The motive-power of error." 

No less fanciful is Mrs. Eddy in the inter- 
pretation of specific texts.^^ Her practice 
is, as in the exegesis of words, to give every 
text the meaning it should have to illustrate 
her philosophy. 



Science and Health 23 

" Thy kingdom come " she thus explains re- 
gardless of the tense : " Thy kingdom is within 
us, Thou art ever present." 

" That was the true Light, which lighteth 
every man that cometh into the world," carries 
with it the evident non sequitur: " Truth cross- 
questioning man as to his knowledge of error, 
finds woman the first to confess her fault." 

" The Lord knoweth the way of the right- 
eous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.'* 
When a truth is so self-evident, why need 
Mrs. Eddy add " Truth has but one reply to 
all error, to sin, sickness, and death : ' Dust 
(nothingness) thou art, and unto dust (no- 
thingness) shalt thou return ' " ? 

" I am he that liveth and was dead : and be- 
hold I am alive for evermore, Amen ; and have 
the keys of hell and of death." The Book of 
Revelation is difficult at best to understand. 
Explanations like the following but enhance 
the difficulty : " Truth should, and does drive 
error out of all selfhood." 

Once at least Mrs. Eddy has ventured to 
change outright the words of Scripture so as 
to alter their essential meaning. She sent the 
following telegraphic greeting to the Na- 
tional Christian Science Association in session 
in New York, May 27, 1890; 



24 Christian Science 

" All hail! He hath filled the hungry with 
good things and the sick he hath not sent empty 
away. — Mother Maryf' 

When later brought to account by a dis- 
tressed disciple for substituting " sick " for 
" rich " and inserting a " not " where there 
was none, she showed at first no disposition to 
correct the error, though she did correct it 
casually two months later in an organ circu- 
lated only among her own flock.^^ 

People outside Christian Science will 
scarcely be inclined to take Science and Health 
seriously as a commentary on the Bible. And 
yet the book must not be dismissed too lightly. 
It is read in comment on the Bible every Sun- 
day at the service, every week day in the home. 
Christian Scientists are among the few people 
in the land who read their Bible every day. 
Theirs is the only organisation in Christendom 
which commands the Bible to be read in the 
light of any commentary. Science and Health 
is therefore coupled with the Bible in the minds 
of some of the most zealous propagandists of 
religion in Christendom to-day, and they num- 
ber many thousands. There are elements of 
peril in the situation. 

And yet it can not be that the Bible is to 
suffer permanently from the obsession Mrs, 



^; 



Science and Health 25 

Eddy's masterpiece has placed upon it. The 
difference between the two books is funda- 
mental. The Bible is built upon the rock of 
actual experience. It explains no facts away. 
It throbs with life Hved in the body. It is the 
story of man's battle with the beast within. 
Through the pages of the Bible, from Genesis 
to Revelation, man is ever coming " from 
Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah." 
The Bible is stained through with red blood. 
Real blows are given. Real tears are shed. 
Real shouts of victory ring out on the 
air. Live men and women tell us their heart 
secrets and we listen as though we saw them 
face to face. The Bible finds every one be- 
cause it is intensely biographical. " Sunrise 
and sunset, birth and death, promise and fulfil- 
ment, the whole drama of Humanity are all in 
this book! "2^ 

Science and Health is built upon the sand 
of metaphysics, and on nothing else. It is 
the most successful effort which the modern 
world has seen to make popular a philosoph- 
ical abstraction. It is, to be sure, biography, 
but the biography of a single soul, and that a 
soul which has not entered deeply into life. 
If the author of Science and Health has ever 
yielded herself in a self -forgetful outpour of 



26 Christian Science 

affection to any human soul, there is no trace 
of such experience in her book. Once at least 
she has reproved a follower for expecting to 
receive from her a love individualised. The 
love she has for man she gives to man as an 
abstract composite. ISTo one would think of 
calling her what Henry Drummond once called 
Dwight L. Moody, " a big human." There 
are no heart throbs in her book. There is 
nothing human in it. 

" My soul is athirst for God ; yea, for the 
living God," the psalmist says. Mrs. Eddy 
mildly hints that " the human capacities are 
enlarged and perfected, in proportion asi 
humanity gains the true conception of man 
and God." 2^ 

" The effectual fervent prayer of a 
righteous man availeth much," St. James in- 
forms us. Mrs. Eddy enters a demurrer: 
" This common custom of praying for the re- 
covery of the sick, finds help in blind belief; 
whereas help should come from the enlightened 
understanding." ^^ 

Completely conscious of the terrible reality 
of sin in his own heart, St. Paul breaks out: 
" O wretched man that I am! Who shall de- 
liver me from the body of this death? " Mrs. 
Eddy would deftly pluck away anxiety with 



Science and Health 27 

the impersonal remark, " If sin were under- 
stood as nothingness it would disappear." ^^ 

" These things I command you, that ye love 
one another," said the Master to His friends 
the night before the crucifixion. " Personal 
love is Uttle better than personal hate," ^^ is 
Mrs. Eddy's contribution to the subject. 

To those to whom death seems something 
more heart-breaking than "the mortal dream"^^ 
which Mrs. Eddy calls it, the last book in the 
Bible brings the comforting assurance that 
" God shall wipe away all tears from their 
eyes." Mrs. Eddy cheers them with the cold 
comfort that " there is no cause for grief." ^^ 

The Bible is built upon the human heart. 
That is the reason why when in ages past " the 
rain descended, and the floods came, and the 
winds blew, and beat upon that house, it fell 
not "; " it was founded upon a rock." 

Science and Health is built upon the sand of 
metaphysics. That is the reason why, in spite 
of Mark Twain's generous prediction, an- 
other century may look back on this strange 
delusion and remark: "The rain descended, 
and the floods came, and the winds blew, and 
beat upon that house; and it fell: and great 
was the fall of it." 



CHAPTER III 

THE SOURCE OF ITS IDEAS 

Modern Claim of their Originality — The Conflict with the 
Author's Earlier Words — The Quimby Panegyrics — 
Teaching Quimbyism — Cooling Gratitude — Absolute 
Disavowals — Mesmeric Explanations — Crux of the 
Situation — 1862 versus 1888 — Quimby's Scrap-book — 
Dr. Evans's Testimony — Incapacity of Mrs. Eddy's 
Modern Witnesses — The Deadly Parallel. 

P OR the thoughts expressed in Science and 
Health Mrs. Eddy disavows indebted- 
ness to any human soul. " No human pen or 
tongue," she says in 1906, " taught me." " In 
the year 1866 I discovered the Christ Science 
. . . and named it Christian Science"; and 
to give her claim Apostolic import she quotes 
in preface to her words a sentence of St. 
Paul's : " I neither received it of man, neither 
was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus 
Christ." ^ 

Here the Christian Scientist is well content 
to rest the case. Mrs. Eddy's word suffices. 
He would take her word against the world. 

28 



The Source of its Ideas 29 

Evidence, no matter who may offer it, tending 
to invahdate her word seems to him, in the 
premises, " dehberate falsehood." ^ But un- 
happily for the Christian Scientist he has to 
reckon with other words, and earlier, from 
Mrs. Eddy's pen. 

Thirteen years before Science and Health 
appeared, four years before she claims in 1906 
to have discovered Christian Science, Mrs. 
Eddy wrote of a well-known healer, P. F. 
Quimby, who cured her of an illness: 

Now I can dimly see at first, and only as trees 
walking, the great principle which underlies Dr. 
Quimby's faith and works; and just in proportion 
to my right perception of truth is my recovery. 
This truth which he opposes to the error of giving* 
intelligence to matter and placing pain where it 
never placed itself, if received understandingly, 
changes the currents of the system to their nor- 
mal action; and the mechanism of the body goes 
undisturbed. That this is a science capable of 
demonstration becomes clear to the minds of those 
patients who reason upon the process of their 
cure. 3 

Transported by sheer gratitude she next 
says of Dr. Quimby, since he " speaks as never 
man before spake, and heals as never man 
healed since Christ, is he not identified with 



30 Christian Science 

truth? And is not this the Christ which is in 
him?"^ 

Grateful beyond prose she then proceeds to 
bathe her healer in bathetic doggerel: 

" 'Mid light of science sits the sage profound, 
Awing with classics and his starry lore, 
Climbing with VenuSj chasing Saturn round, 
Turning his mystic pages o'er and o'er. 
Till, from empyrean space, his wearied sight 
Turns to the oasis on which to gaze. 
More bright than glitters on the brow of night 
The self-taught man walking in wisdom's ways. 
Then paused the captive gaze with peace entwined. 
And sight was satisfied with thee to dwell; 
But not in classics would the book-worm find 
That law of excellence whence came the spell 
Potent o'er all, — the captive to unbind. 
To heal the sick and faint, the halt and blind." ^ 

In the months that followed she talked in- 
cessantly of Dr. Quimby to her friends, and 
turned them into patients when she could. 
Her intimate of those days, Mrs. Crosby, in 
whose home Mrs. Eddy stayed for several 
months, and of whom she once wrote Dr. 
Quimby " Mrs. Crosby is one of the precious 
few affinities with whom I meet," writes as 
though there were no doubt of Mrs. Eddy's 
complete absorption in the views of Dr. 
Quimby. She adds that even as late as 1877, 



The Source of its Ideas 31 

when she was reporting Mrs. Eddy's lect- 
ures, Mrs. Eddy's views were " substantially 
the same " as the two had learned 
some fifteen years before at Quimby's 
feet.^ The testimony of Mr. and Mrs. 
Julius A. Dresser, also student-patients when 
Mrs. Eddy was, speaks to the same effect, 

though they note that Mrs. Eddy's subsequent 
interpretation of the teachings of her master 
was one-sided.^ And Quimby's son, then 
just past his majority, says that " Christian 
Science would not now exist if Mrs. Eddy had 
not filched the healing idea from him." ^ 

She deluged Dr. Quimby with letters, which 
she now must wish were not extant, and which 
are overfull of fulsome acknowledgment of 
her indebtedness to him for the help he gave 
her mind as well as for the healing of her body. 
January 12, 1863, she wrote: " I am to all who 
see me a living wonder, and a Hving monu- 
ment of your power. . . . My explanation 
of your curative principle surprises people, 
especially those whose minds are all matter." 
In letters that followed occur such sentences 
as these: "Who is wise but you?" "Dear 
Doctor, what could I do without you? " " I 
am up and about to-day, i. e., by the help of 
the Lord (Quimby) ." " Jesus taught as man 



32 Christian Science 

does not, who then is wise but you? " 
" Posted at the public marts of this city is this 
notice, — * Mrs. M. M. Patterson [now Mrs. 
Eddy] will lecture at the Town Hall on P. 
P. Quimby's Spiritual Science healing disease, 
as opposed to Deism or Rochester Rapping 
Spiritualism.' " ^ 

When Dr. Quimby died, January 16, 1866, 
the year Mrs. Eddy says she discovered Chris- 
tian Science without the help of human pen or 
tongue, she was concerned lest no one should 
be found strong enough to bend Ulysses' bow. 
She urges Mr. Dresser, a man of unusual 
character and ability, to take up the work of 
Quimby on the score that no one is so well 
equipped as he to carry on the enterprise. 
Then she crowns four years of panegyric of 
her healer and her teacher with an obituary 
possibly as mellifluous and melodramatic as 
was ever visited on the memory of any soul by 
a sentimental and adoring worshipper: 

" Did sack-cloth clothe the sun and day grow night, 
All matter mourn the hour with dewy eyes, 
When Truth receding from our mortal sight 
Had paid to error her last sacrifice? 

" Can we forget the power that gave us life? 
Shall we forget the wisdom of its way? 



The Source of its Ideas 33 

Then ask me not amid this mortal strife — 
This keenest pang of animated clay — 

" To mourn him less ; to mourn him more were just 
If to his memory 't were a tribute given 
For every solemn, sacred, earnest trust 
Delivered to us ere he rose to heaven. 

" Heaven but the happiness of that calm soul, 
Growing in stature to the throne of God; 
Kest should reward him who has made us whole, 
Seeking though tremblers, where his footsteps 
trod." 10 

In the years that followed Quimby's death 
in 1866 Mrs. Eddy in season and out was 
preaching Quimby's ideas and giving him the 
credit for them all. Those closest to her then 
are in complete agreement on this point. Dr. 
A. M. Gushing, who attended Mrs. Eddy 
professionally in February, 1866, and again in 
August, 1866, tells me that as her physician 
he was much embarrassed by her frequent ref- 
erences to Dr. Quimby.^^ Mrs. Julia Rus- 
sell Walcott writes me of Mrs. Eddy's con- 
tinuous study of the notes of Quimby that 
same year at the Russells' in Lynn and at the 
Wheelers' in Swampscott.^^ At the Ellises' 
in Swampscott she was constantly explaining 
Quimby's theories of mind and matter.^^ The 
spring of 1867 found her instructing Hiram 



34 Christian Science 

S. Crafts, of East Stoughton, in Quimby's 
healing system, and later, in Amesbury, she 
was known as Quimby's pupil. At the Went- 
worths' in Stoughton, where she stayed for two 
years, her one consuming interest was Quimby- 
ism, and she was continually emphasising this. 
Mr. Richard Kennedy, her partner in the heal- 
ing work from 1870 to 1872, bears tribute to 
the largeness of the Quimby influence in her 
life, and Mr. Daniel H. Spoiford, who knew 
her intimately in the years that followed, 
speaks in the same vein.^^ 

But by and by Mrs. Eddy's transports of 
affection for her teacher cooled. As pupils 
came beneath her spell, they began to doubt 
whether Quimby could have meant so much to 
her as she had thought, and she was not un- 
willing to revise her earlier impressions in the 
interest of her growing fame. Her mem- 
ory of the details of her relationship to Quimby 
steadily grew more and more defective. Her 
earlier panegyrics of him faded from her recol- 
lection. " Others of his pupils," says Georgine 
Milmine, " lost themselves in Quimby's philos- 
ophy, but Mrs. Glover lost Quimby in her- 
self." ^^ By 1883 she was making bold to 
qualify the more tenacious memory of even 
Mrs. Crosby. She tried, with the help of a 



The Source of its Ideas 35 

lawyer, to induce Mrs. Crosby to make aiRda- 
vit that when they two were fellow-patients 
under Quimby more than twenty years before, 
she " used to take his scribblings and fix them 
over for him and give him my thoughts and 
language, which, as I understood it, were far 
in advance of his." Mrs. Crosby's answer was 
so prompt and unsatisfying that she has never 
since had word from Mrs. Eddy.^^ 

By this time Mrs. Eddy could bear to write 
wdth some aplomb: 

We never were a student of Dr. Quimby's. . . 
We were one of his patients. . . . We knew him 
about twenty years ago, and aimed to help him. 
We saw he was looking in our direction, and asked 
him to write his thoughts out. He did so, and then 
we would take that copy to correct, and sometimes 
so transform it that he would say it was our com- 
position, which it virtually was. 

The next year she was able to speak with 
something close to patronising nonchalance. 

The old gentleman to whom we have referred 
had some very advanced views on healing, but he 
was not avowedly religious, neither scholarly. We 
interchanged thoughts on the subject of healing the 
sick. I restored some patients of his that he failed 
to heal, and left in his possession some manuscripts 
of mine containing corrections of his desultory 
pennings.^'^ 



36 Christian Science 

Brought to book by some of the letters which 
she had written earher to Dr. Quimby in frank 
acknowledgment of her obligations to him, 
Mrs. Eddy disavows responsibility by assert- 
ing that she wrote these under meomeric 
influence. 

" Did I write those articles purporting to be 
mine?" she asks in the Boston Post, March 7, 1883, 
after the publication of some of the most damaging 
of all the letters. " I might have written them 
twenty or thirty years ago, for I was under the 
mesmeric treatment of Dr. Quimby from 1862 until 
his death. . . . My head was so turned by animal 
magnetism and will power, under treatment, that I 
might have written something as hopelessly incor- 
rect as the articles now published in the Dresser 
pamphlet. I was not healed until after the death 
of Mr. Quimby; and then healing came as the re- 
sult of my discovery, in 1866, of the Science of 
Mind-healing, since named Christian Science." ^^ 

Though her literary helper, Rev. J. H. 
Wiggin, told her frankly that there was noth- 
ing to be said for her new attitude toward Dr. 
Quimby, and wrote in a personal letter (now 
in the possession of McClure's Magazine) that 
" What Mrs. Eddy has, as documents clearly 
prove, she got from P. P. Quimby of Portland, 
Me., whom she eulogised after death as the 
great leader and her special teacher/' Mrs, 



The Source of its Ideas 37 

Eddy has with passing years grown more as- 
sertive that she owes no debt to Dr. Quimby, 
that he in fact got all he knew from her. But 
even thus she has not steadily adhered to the 
date, 1866, which she sets in 1906 for the dis- 
covery of her system. In 1875 she gives the 
year as 1864; in 1883 as 1853; and in 1887 she 
writes, " As long ago as 1844 I was convinced 
that mortal mind produced all disease and that 
the various medical systems were in no proper 
sense scientific. "^^ 

To the Christian Scientist, all this confusion 
of dates and contradiction of facts presents no 
problem. Mrs. Eddy's latest word is for him 
her authentic word. Anything spoken hith- 
erto that does not agree with what she says 
to-day was spoken under the mesmeric in- 
fluence of animal magnetism and therefore is 
superseded. 

To the generous-minded, there will at once 
recur in the consideration of the problem in- 
stances in which what seem to be discrepancies 
of dates might conceivably be stepping-stones 
in the development of a great system. But 
unhappily Mrs. Eddy has appeared unwilling, 
since she came to wider repute, to give to her 
master credit such as once she gave readily for 
any share whatever in her preparation 



38 Christian Science 

for an unusual career. Though one would 
gladly attribute to mental incapacity for exact 
expression seeming inaccuracies of statement, 
it is a significant circumstance, as Georgine 
Milmine hints,^^ that each date or statement 
given by Mrs. Eddy appears to have had the 
purpose either of disavowing all indebted- 
ness to her teacher or of extricating herself 
from some difficulty of the moment ; and if one 
is seeking for the truth and nothing but the 
truth, one can but hesitate. 

The essential issue is this: What was 
Quimby's healing method when Mrs. Eddy 
came in 1862 into his life? Mrs. Eddy says 
in 1888 that Quimby was " a distinguished 
mesmerist and that his method was thoroughly 
physical rather than mental." ^^ But she 
had described it about 1862 in terms that con- 
tradict her words of 1888. Which Mrs. Eddy 
are we to believe, the Mrs. Eddy of 1888 or 
1862? Both cannot be believed. 

The P. P. Quimby who, alive, in 1862 fur- 
nished Mrs. Eddy the true answer that she 
gave that year, dead speaks to her confusion 
now. There lies before me as I write a little 
worn and faded scrap-book.^^ It bears on 
the fly-leaf the name of P. P. Quimby. It 
was his own book. His wife pasted in it for 



The Source of its Ideas 39 

him now and then in the fifties and early 
sixties newspaper comments on his work. It 
contains also an important circular prepared 
with his son's assistance, which Quimby used 
in the early sixties to describe his healing meth- 
ods, and of which Mrs. Eddy wrote him, four 
months before she first met him, " I have en- 
tire confidence in your philosophy as read in 
the circular." 

It is interesting to observe that all the com- 
ments testify that his method was exactly as 
described in 1862 by Mrs. Eddy. Two chp- 
pings, bearing the date of 1856, deny that he 
used mesmerism and picture him as saying 
that " diseases of the body are caused by a 
derangement of the mind " and as batthng 
with disease as purely " mental." Another, a 
year later, from the Bangor Jeffersonian^ de- 
nies that he employed mesmeric methods and 
then proceeds to the illuminating statement 
that the mind can cure as well as cause disease. 
The Free Press, Lebanon, New Hampshire, 
December 3, 1860, expresses the conviction 
that " the foundation of his theory, regarded 
simply as a belief, is that disease is not self- 
existent nor created by God, but that it is 
purely the invention of man." Yet another, 
dated 1861, announces that Quimby cures 



I 

40 Christian Science 

even the most desperate cases of disease " on 
scientific principles, without the use of medi- 
cine or any material agency; also without the 
aid of mesmerism." 

A clipping from the Portland Advertiser of 
February 13, 1862, contains Quimby's own 
statement; " I deny disease as a truth, but ad- 
mit it as a deception." The next month, in 
the same paper. Dr. F. L. Town, assistant 
surgeon in the United States army, on his 
own responsibility lifts Quimby out of the 
class of " spiritualists, clairvoyants, and other 
charlatans." 

Later in the same year I find in the Port- 
land Courier an eloquent denial that Quimby 
was either a spiritualist or mesmerist, and an 
unequivocal statement that under Quimby's 
care patients recovered " in proportion to 
* their ' perception of truth." This letter is 
signed by Mary M. Patterson, earlier Mary 
M. Glover, and now Mary Baker G. Eddy. 

With these facts in mind the reader will 
probably be more inclined to accept the word of 
Mrs. Patterson of 1862, confirmed as it is by 
others competent to speak, than of Mrs. Eddy 
of 1888 dismissing Quimby merely as a mes- 
merist, and in 1907 inspiring a defender to 
proclaim " that P. P. Quimby was a mes- 



The Source of its Ideas 41 

merist, that he mesmerised her body and hyp- 
notised her thought." ^^ But if anything is 
wanting to enable one to decide between Mrs. 
Eddy of 1862 and Mrs. Eddy of 1888 and 
1907 the following circular, mentioned above 
and in use from 1860 to 1865, from Quimby's 
scrap-book, will supply the want. 

TO THE SICK. 

DR. P. P. QUIMBY would respectfully announce 
to the citizens of and vicinity, that he will 

be at the where he will attend to those 

wishing to consult him in regard to their health, 
and, as his practice is unlike all other medical prac- 
tices, it is necessary to say that lie gives no medi- 
cines and makes no outward applications^ but simply 
sits down by the patients, tells them their feelings, 
and what they think is their disease. If the pa- 
tients admit that he tells them their feelings, etc., 
then this explanation is the cure; and, if he succeeds 
in correcting their error, he changes the fluid of the 
system and establishes the truth or health. The 
Truth is the Cure, This mode of practice applies 
to all cases. If no explanation is given, no charge 
is made, for no effect is produced. His opinion 
without an explanation is useless, for it contains no 
knowledge, and would be like other medical opin- 
ions, worse than none. This error gives rise to all 
kinds of quackery, not only among regular physi- 
cians, but those whose aim is to deceive people by 
pretending to cure all diseases. The sick are anx- 



42 



Christian Science 



ious to get well and they apply to these persons, 
supposing them to be honest and friendly, whereas 
they are made to believe they are very sick and 
something must be done ere it is too late. Five or 
ten dollars is then paid, for the cure of some disease 
they never had nor ever would have but for the 
wrong impressions received from these quacks, or 
robbers, (as they might be called), for it is the 
worst kind of robbery, tho' sanctioned by law. Now, 
if they will only look at the secret of this descrip- 
tion, they will find it is for their own selfish objects 
— to sell their medicines. Herein consists their 
shrewdness! — to impress patients with a wrong 
idea, namely — that they have some disease. This 
makes them nervous and creates in their minds a 
disease that otherwise would never have been 
thought of. Wherefore he says to such, never con- 
sult a quack; you not only lose your money, but 
your health. 

He gives no opinion, therefore you lose nothing. 
If patients feel pain they know it, and if he de- 
scribes their pain he feels it, and in his explanation 
lies the cure. Patients, of course, have some opin- 
ion as to what causes pain — he has none, therefore 
the disagreement lies not in the pain, but in the 
cause of the pain. He has the advantage of patients, 
for it is very easy to convince them that he had no 
pain before he sat down by them. After this it be- 
comes his duty to prove to them the cause of their 
trouble. This can only be explained to patients, 
for which explanation his charge is dollars. 

If necessary to see them more than once 
dollars. This has been his mode of practice for the 



The Source of its Ideas 43 

last seventeen years. For the past eight years he 
has given no medicines nor made any outward 
applications. 

There are many who pretend to practise as he 
does, but when a person while in " a trance," claims 
any power from the spirits of the departed, and 
recommends any kind of medicine to be taken in- 
ternally or applied externally, beware! believe them 
not, " for by their fruits ye shall know them." 

But besides the Quimby scrap-book there is 
another confirmation of Mrs. Eddy's estimate 
of 1862. It is found in a book published in 
1872, three years before Science and Health 
first appeared and the Christian Science or- 
ganisation was formed, and while Mrs. Eddy 
was still paying glad tributes to her master. 
The book bears the title Mental Medicine. Its 
author was Dr. W. F. Evans, a patient under 
Quimby a few months after Mrs. Eddy. Like 
Mr. Dresser, Dr. Evans was a man of rare 
character and considerable ability. Quimby 
won his confidence by curing him of a serious 
disease and he won Quimby's by his native 
worth. If Quimby had been looking in Mrs. 
Eddy's direction, and if he was her pupil rather 
than she his, as she professes. Dr. Evans, keen 
as he was, would have had some reason to sus- 
pect it. 



44 Christian Science 

This is his description of Quimby as a 
healer : 

There is profound philosophy underlying the 
cures effected by Christ, and a distinct school of 
medicine may be erected upon it. One of the marked 
characteristics of the system is the discarding of 
all drugs and chemical agencies, and the placing 
sole reliance on psychical forces and remedies. It 
recognises the supreme controlling influence of the 
mind over the body, the inner over the outward man, 
both in health and disease. The body seems to have 
been viewed by him not as the real selfhood, but as 
only the shadow of the soul, the inner life of man. 
It corresponds to or echoes the states and movements 
of the interior nature. Disease is not so much a 
mere physical derangement, in its primary princi- 
ple, as it is an abnormal mental condition, an in- 
harmony of the psychical element and force — a 
wrong belief, a falsity. This fixed belief, that was 
viewed as the root of the morbid outward condition, 
is not a mere intellectual act, and has no reference 
to a creed, but represents an inward condition, the 
state of the inner man, what the German writers on 
the philosophy of mind denominate the interior con- 
sciousness. This is the governing element, the 
controlling principle. The bodily state is the index 
to it. ^' As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." 
Disease being in its root a wrong belief, in the sense 
explained above, change that belief and we cure the 
disease. By faith we are thus made whole. There 
is a law here the world will sometime understand 
and use in the cure of the diseases that afflict man- 



The Source of its Ideas 45 

kind. The late Dr. Quimby of Portland, Maine, one 
of the most successful healers of this or any age, 
embraced this view of the nature of disease, and by 
a long succession of most remarkable cures, effected 
by psychopathic remedies, at the same time proved 
the truth of the theory and the efficiency of that 
mode of treatment. Had he lived in a remote age 
or country, the wonderful facts which occurred in 
his practice would have now been deemed either 
mythical or miraculous. He seemed to reproduce 
the wonders of the Gospel history. But all this was 
only an exhibition of the force of suggestion, or the 
action of the law of faith, over a patient in the im- 
pressible condition.24 

Into the vexed question of the Quimby 
manuscripts, which through the courtesy of 
Mr. George A. Quimby I have read, there is 
no need to enter. The evidence akeady pre- 
sented is sufficient to acquaint the reader with 
the general principle that underlay Quimby's 
views. The manuscript which Mrs. Eddy 
used in the late sixties and the early seventies 
and regularly said was Quimby's is in com- 
plete agreement with the Quimby theory. An 
unbroken line of witnesses from 1862 to 1875 
all testify that Mrs. Eddy was in those years 
continuously making generous acknowledg- 
ment that she got her central principle from 
Quimby and that the Mrs. Eddy of 1862 rather 
than the Mrs. Eddy of 1888 is to be believed. 



46 Christian Science 

Even if George A. Quimby had in 1887 ac- 
cepted Mrs. Eddy's proposition to publish at 
her expense the Quimby manuscripts on con- 
dition that she be allowed to determine whether 
they were Quimby's thoughts or hers, the sit- 
uation would not have been changed. Even 
if the United States Court, in 1883, did decide 
that Arens's book was an infringement on the 
copyright of Science and Healthy the deeper 
question of whether Quimby or Mrs. Eddy 
was the author of what were plainly Quimby's 
views when Mrs. Eddy knew him was in no 
way touched.^^ It could not be. 

Mrs. Eddy stands or falls by her own 
words. The contradiction between 1862 and 
1888 can only be explained away when wit- 
nesses are found covering the years from 1856 
to 1875, to offset the testimony of the Quimby 
scrap-book, Mr. and Mrs. Dresser, Mrs. 
Crosby, Mr. George A. Quimby, Mrs. Wal- 
cott, the Wentworths, Mr. Kennedy, Dr. 
Evans, and Mr. Spofford. The contradiction 
in itself disqualifies Mrs. Eddy to testify at all 
in the unusual circumstances. Who then will 
come to the support of Mrs. Eddy of 1888 
and 1907 against Mrs. Eddy of 1862? 

The Committee on Publication manifestly 
can not. Christian Science, though Quimbjr 



The Source of its Ideas 47 

had already used the name, had not been born. 
The committee, therefore, was not in exist- 
ence. In a communication addressed to me 
May 3, 1907, the committee claims that 
Quimby " never knew or practised a method of 
giving a mental treatment. He was a mag- 
netic practitioner and a mesmerist and never 
was anything else. . . . His practice did 
not differ from that of many other magnetic 
practitioners of his time. All this I can 
prove by conclusive, indisputable, doctmien- 
tary evidence." ^^ But when. May 5, I went 
by appointment to Boston to make a 
careful study of the evidence, I was sadly dis- 
appointed. If the committee has such evi- 
dence, the public, which is passing on the 
Quimby issue in these days, has a right to see 
il: and to weigh it carefully. Every day's de- 
lay is hurting the Mrs. Eddy^ of 1888 and 
1907, and confirming the Mrs. Eddy of 1862. 
Still insistent in my search for witnesses 
who can speak for Mrs. Eddy of 1888 and 
1907 against Mrs. Eddy of 1862, whom all the 
witnesses now known support, the Committee 
on Publication earnestly advised an interview 
with the author of the Human Life series. But 
when, on June 13th, I went to Boston by ap- 
pointment for this interview I once more 



4^ Christian Science 

suffered disappointment. The author, hke 
the Committee on PubHcation, has apparently 
found no witnesses; and since, as she had al- 
ready written me, her " information is exhaus- 
tive," it begins to look as though the only wit- 
nesses who can be found to refute Mrs. Eddy 
of 1862 are those who never even knew her 
then.2^ 

While we await the witnesses we need, a 
brief comparison of what we know was 
Quimby's with Mrs. Eddy's masterpiece may 
be worth the while. The deadly parallel does 
not always prove its case. There may be simi- 
larity of view without plagiarism. But when 
similarity shades off into practical identity in 
thought and word alike there is but one con- 
clusion to be reached. The passages in paral- 
lel speak for themselves and from them there 
is no appeal conceivable. 

DE. QUIMBY.28 MRS. EDDY. 

1. " Christian Science.'^ 1. " Christian Science." 

2. " Science of Health." 2. "Science and 

Health." 

3. " Matter has no in- 3. " Matter cannot pro- 

telligence. duce mind." 

4. " Matter is an error." 4. " Matter is a mortal 

error." 



The Source of its Ideas 



49 



5. " Understanding is 

God." 

6. "Truth is God." 

7. " God is Principle." 

8. " Wisdom, Love, and 

Truth are the Prin- 
ciple." 



9. " All sciences are 
part of God." 

10. " The idea, man is 

the highest — hence 
the image of God." 

11. " Error is sickness. 

Truth is health." 

12. " The patient's dis- 

ease is in his dis- 
belief. ... If you 
are not afraid to 
face the error and 
argue it down, 
then you can heal 
the sick." 



5. " Understanding is a 

quality of God." 

6. "Truth is God." 

7. " God is Principle." 

8. " Adhere to . . . 

Principle, and fol- 
low its behests, 
abiding steadily in 
Wisdom, Love, and 
Truth." 

9. " All science is of 

God." 

10. " Man was and is 

God's idea." 

11. " Sickness is part of 

the error which 
Truth casts out." 

12. " Science not only 

reveals the origin 
of all disease as 
wholly mental, but 
it also declares 
that all disease is 
cured by mind." 



CHAPTER IV 

THE FOUNDER OF THE FAITH 

The World when she was Born — Childhood — Environment 
and Education — First Marriage in 1843 — Widowhood 
and Invalidism — Second Marriage in 1853 — Visit in 
1862 to Quimby— His Healing System— Mrs. Eddy's 
Great Mistake— The "Final Revelation" in 1866— 
Separation from her Second Husband and Divorce 
— Professional Visiting — Partnership in Lynn with 
Richard Kennedy in 1870 — Established as a Leader — 
Relationship with D. H. Spofford — The docile Mr. 
Eddy — Third Marriage — Christian Science organised 
in 1875 — Removal in 1881 to Boston — Court and Cabi- 
net — College and Church — To Concord in 1889 — 
Christian Science To-day — An Astonishing Autoc- 
racy — The Manual — The Modern Mona Lisa — Her 
Virtues and her Faults. 

IVARS. eddy is no longer young. She 
^ ' ^ was born the summer of Napoleon's 
death, in 1821. She was closer that year to the 
American Revolution and the War of 1812 
than babies born this year are to the Civil War 
and our recent war with Spain. 

50 



The Founder of the Faith 51 

Always a New Englander in point of view, 
Mrs. Eddy grew up with New England. The 
prestige of Virginia was waning. New York's 
was yet to be. New England was generat- 
ing for the entire land ideas in politics and in 
religion, and was indulging to the full her na- 
tive penchant for the mystical. 

Clairvoyance, spiritualism, mesmerism, and 
other psychical phenomena were in the air. 
There was discussion of them on the lecture 
platform and at every cross-road. Mesmer 
was dead but mesmerists were everywhere in 
evidence.^ Charles Poyen was talking in 
many places where Mrs. Eddy later lived, 
about the " Power of Mind over Matter," and 
was making ready for the publication in 1837 
of his book on Animal Magnetism in New 
England, What Braid had done in England 
to make mesmerism popular. Grimes was do- 
ing in New England, and Dods and Stone 
were proving his apt pupils. Andrew Jack- 
son Davis, also, was astonishing audiences by 
his mesmeric performances. 

At Canterbury, five miles from the place 
where Mrs. Eddy lived from her fifteenth to 
her twenty-second year, the Shakers, whom 
Mrs. Eddy's brother's preceptor-at-law, 
Franklin Pierce, later President of the United 



52 Christian Science 

States, defended in the courts, were ever 
thinking of their extraordinary leader. She 
had died long years before, but they were still 
speaking of her as the " Mother," " the female 
principle of God," " the female Christ "; using 
such terms as " Father-Mother God," " the 
Church of Christ," the "Mother Church"; 
and refusing to pray audibly and setting 
celibacy high above the marriage state. 

Mrs. Eddy comes of good New England 
stock. On both sides she has a pedigree of 
thrift, honesty, and intelligence above the 
average. Her father, Mark Baker, was able, 
upright, conscientious, and fearless, though 
dogmatic, high-tempered, and hard-fisted. 
Accounts agree in making her mother, nee 
Abigail Bernard Ambrose, capable, gentle, 
and unselfish.^ 

Born at Bow, New Hampshire, July 16, 
1821, the youngest in a family of six, Mary A. 
Morse Baker proved to be the only member of 
her family who achieved national distinction. 
Her brother Albert, nominated for Congress 
in 1841, might have proved a worthy second 
had he not died at the age of thirty-one before 
he was elected. The loneliness of a childhood 
spent on the ancestral farm was accentuated 
by delicacy of health which saved her from the 



The Founder of the Faith 53 

drudgery that usually falls to the New Eng- 
land girl brought up in the country, gave her 
time to read such books as were at hand, and 
brought out both the defects and the virtues of 
her character. 

In 1836 Mark Baker sold his farm and 
moved to town, Sanbornton Bridge, — now 
Tilton. Life was larger and more interesting 
at " The Bridge." Mary Baker, then fifteen, 
blossomed out at once into the village belle. 
Of medium height, slim and graceful, ex- 
quisitely moulded even to her hands and feet, 
features regular and refined, big blue eyes 
which could flash black on occasion, the fresh 
bloom of a pure complexion, an abundance of 
bright brown hair, escaping in ringlets from 
beneath her bonnet, always gowned in good 
taste and yet mindful of observers, Mary 
Baker was the cynosure of every eye as she 
came tripping every Sunday into church. 

Already conscious of the power which has 
given her a distinctive place among women, 
she invariably took the centre of the stage. 
She expected and accepted the peculiar con- 
sideration given to her instinctively by every- 
body in the family and friendly circle. When 
her sweetness and her charm, however, were 
not adequate to win the influence desired, she 



54 Christian Science 

knew how to challenge and command. High- 
strung and hysterical, she knew when to em- 
ploy the arts of the neurotic. Imperious and 
masterful in girlhood as in womanhood, she 
always played the game of life to win. In- 
dependent in her judgments even then, she 
won exemption from belief in predestination, 
when at the age of seventeen she joined the 
Tilton Congregational Church. 

Schools are for the average and Mary Baker 
was no average girl. The stories of her 
school-days are the stories many people tell 
about the school-days of extraordinary people. 
Her schoolmates found her indolent and indif- 
ferent to the routine to which they yielded 
without murmuring. Ill-health and day- 
dreaming are not conducive to the plodding 
of the school room. Her father, therefore, 
wisely kept her " much out of school " she 
says, and without hurt to her.^ 

One may be permitted, however, not to ac- 
cept too literally her statement that she was 
studying those years, under her brother Al- 
bert, Natural Philosophy, Logic, Moral 
Science, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. There 
is nowhere in her writings substantial evidence 
that she was well grounded in these subjects. 
Real learning does not vanish like a dream as 



The Founder of the Faith 55 

Mrs. Eddy says hers did when she discovered 
Christian Science. If one is obliged to draw 
any inference as to her schoohng from the 
facts in evidence it will, perhaps, be not unlike 
that which her schoolmates stated in the homely 
v/ords: "Mary Baker completed her educa- 
tion when she had finished Smith's grammar 
and had reached long division in arithmetic." * 

Marriage was inevitable. The craving for 
the new experience is insatiate in a person- 
ality as highly sensitised as Mary Baker's 
was. And so when George Washington Glo- 
ver, big, kind-hearted, and industrious, came 
a-courting she did not say him nay. They 
were married in December, 1843, and went to 
South Carolina to live, where he died six 
months later of yellow fever. Helped north 
by the Free Masons because her husband was 
a Mason, Mrs. Glover gave birth the next 
September in her father's house in Tilton to a 
son whom she named for his father. 

The years that followed are too sad and 
bleak for full description. The mdowed 
mother, just past twenty-three, was lapsing 
from frailness into an invalidism which was 
not to lift till she was almost fifty. Her 
baby fell into the hands of kind but ignorant 
care-takers, grew up without education, and 



56 Christian Science 

has seldom seen his mother since his babyhood. 
Her mother was old, her father past his prime. 
There was no place for her at home, and her 
brothers and sisters, with homes of their own, 
were not inclined to make one for a sister who 
in spite of many native gifts lacked the grace 
of adaptation. Mrs. Glover was discouraged. 
She made one short-lived effort to support her- 
self by teaching. Then after her father's sec- 
ond marriage she entered on a sad and sordid 
life of drifting which continued till Richard 
Kennedy came to her relief in 1870 and by his 
industry and generosity made her for the first 
time in her life economically independent. 

She lived with one relative for a time, and 
then passed on to the next who would receive 
her. Poor relation as she was in every home, 
she acted steadily as though her presence was 
a privilege to be impressed on those with 
whom she lived. She took the best they had 
to give as though it were her right. She had 
the family life adjusted to her nerves. She 
made herself the centre of each situation. She 
gave the servants extra trouble if there were 
servants in the house. If there were not, she 
let it sometimes fall upon a hostess old enough 
to be her mother. 

If the thought of helping on, as others do 



The Founder of the Faith 57 

who fall into her plight, ever crossed her mind, 
she carefully safeguarded it from practical ex- 
pression. To spend your time writing books 
and entertaining callers while your hostess 
plays the drudge, to queen it at the sewing 
circle and the " lodge " when there are duties 
to be done in the home where you are staying, 
does not tend to the perpetuation of the wel- 
come, however gladly it may at first have been 
given. And so in all those bitter years, which 
ran on from 1843 to 1870, Mrs. Eddy was en- 
gaged almost continuously in wearing out her 
welcome and in saying good-bye to the past. 

She sometimes received attention from the 
other sex. She had to have it. Admiration was 
the breath of life to her. She touched at last 
the heart of an itinerant dentist. Dr. Daniel 
Patterson, who was rough but genial, and 
when he gave her sympathy in her forlornness 
and her invahdism, she married him in 1853. 

But her second marriage did not end her 
troubles. It prolonged them. One who 
knew her husband tells me, " Dr. Patterson 
was too slow for her." He was not a good 
provider. He could not always earn a living 
as a dentist and so he sometimes practised 
homoeopathy and even turned his hand to run- 
ning a saw-milL They Uved for years a pre- 



58 Christian Science 

carious existence, moving from place to place, 
— Tilton, Franklin, North Groton, Rumney. 
Incompatibility of disposition and irreconcil- 
able standards led in 1862 to a separation, when 
Dr. Patterson went off to the Civil War as a 
spectator, only to be captured by the Confed- 
erates and to fall into Libby prison. After 
his return some two years later, there was an- 
other unsuccessful effort made in Lynn to live 
together, followed by final separation in 1866 
and by divorce in 1873. 

After the last separation her plight was 
worse than ever. She was now estranged 
from practically all of her own flesh and blood. 
She had lost one husband too soon after mar- 
riage for assurance that the marriage would 
have proved a happy and successful one. She 
had lost another husband through the utter 
failure of the marriage. She was the mother 
of a son now grown to man's estate but whom 
she had not seen for years and in whom she 
seemed to have so little interest as to perplex 
her good friend Mrs. Crosby, busy and con- 
tented with her babies. She had few friends. 
They invariably have few who count friend- 
ship a field for exploitation. She had no plan 
in life except apparently to eat bread that she 
had not earned and would not help to bake. 



The Founder of the Faith 59 

She had no point of view to insure straight 
looking out on hfe and no philosophy to lift 
her out of self. That she was to find in her 
search for health. 

All the years of her domestic infelicity and 
chronic invalidism Mrs. Eddy was thinking, 
she now says, of the possibilities of spiritual 
release from pain. After Dr. Patterson went 
south in the summer of 1862, she made a visit 
to Portland, Maine, a nervous wreck, attracted 
by the stories of the " wonderful cures " a cer- 
tain Dr. Quimby had been making without 
drugs.^ 

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby was then a man 
of sixty. Son of a blacksmith of scanty means, 
he received but little schooling. Appren- 
ticed as a boy to a clock-maker, he early showed 
those keen powers of observation, inventive- 
ness, and originality of thought which made 
him a marked man his whole life through. A 
truth-lover and truth-seeker by instinct, he 
never took opinions ready-made. He read 
much. The Bible was ever in his hand, and 
sometimes Berkeley. He was well informed 
on current topics, thought clearly, and was apt 
to put his thoughts on paper. 

Such a man was certain to be interested in 
the occultism which in his young manhood 



6o Christian Science 

swept through New England. He followed 
Charles Poyen about from place to place and 
learned how to do his mesmeric tricks. In 
the forties, " Park Quimby " and his subject 
Lucius Burkmar, became household words in 
many a New England and Canadian village.^ 

Quimby, with his love for man, soon grad- 
uated out of the spectacular into the bene- 
ficent and turned his mesmerism to the good 
account of healing. But, like Bernheim of 
Nancy and Dubois of Berne in more modern 
times, Quimby by and by discovered that in 
suggestion lies the secret of all mental healing, 
and that its exaggerated forms, as seen in 
mesmerism and hypnotism, are seldom needed 
to effect a cure. Long before Mrs. Eddy 
came his way, he was leaving mesmerism be- 
hind and, as one of his old friends wrote to me, 
June 16, 1907, when Mrs. Eddy knew Quimby 
" nothing was more apt to excite him than the 
suggestion that there was mystery in his 
theory or practice." 

At least three years before Mrs. Eddy 
sought his help, he was beginning to reduce 
his theory of healing to writing. With his 
own hand he put his thoughts on paper. He 
had the clerical assistance of the Misses Ware, 
daughters of a judge of the United States 



The Founder of the Faith 6i 

Admiralty Court, and of his son, George A. 
Quimby. Mr. Horatio W. Dresser, son of 
Mr. J. A. Dresser, who was not only one of 
Quimby 's patients before Mrs. Eddy came to 
him in 1862 but also often explained Quimby's 
theory to Mrs. Eddy, several years ago talked 
out the matter with all those who gave Quimby 
clerical assistance in his writing and himself 
later copied several hundred pages, which on 
his father's and his mother's word, as well as 
on that of George A. Quimby and of the 
Misses Ware, he was assured was Quimby's 
intellectual production. 

Mr. George A. Quimby thus describes his 
father's way of working: "From that time 
(1859) he began to write out his ideas, which 
practice he continued until his death, the arti- 
cles now being in the possession of the writer 
of this sketch. The original copy he would 
give to the Misses Ware ; and it would be read 
to him by them ; and, if he suggested any alter- 
ation, it would be made, after which it would 
be copied either by the Misses Ware or the 
writer of this, and then reread to him, that he 
might see that all was just as he intended it. 
Not even the most trival word or the construc- 
tion of a sentence would be changed without 
consulting him. He was given to repetition, 



62 Christian Science 

and it was with difficulty that he could be in- 
duced to have a repeated sentence or phrase 
stricken out, as he would say, ' If that idea is a 
good one, and true, it will do no harm to have 
it in two or three times.' He believed in the 
hammering process, and in throwing an idea 
or truth at the reader till it would be firmly 
fixed in his mind." 

Between 1859 and 1866, when Dr. Quimby 
died, he produced in this way — so character- 
istic of literary workers in these typewriter 
days — ten volumes of manuscript. Much of 
this — "over eight hundred closely written 
pages covering one hundred and twenty sub- 
jects " ^ — was written before Mrs. Eddy 
paid him her first visit in the autumn of 1862. 
She probably never saw a page of the original 
manuscript. The copy which she made in 
1862 of the first volume was a copy of a copy 
made by Julius A. Dresser and loaned by him 
to Mrs. Eddy. Her claim in later years that 
the Quimby manuscripts were her own manu- 
scripts which she had left with Quimby years 
before ^ can be established only by discredit- 
ing all the other witnesses and by denying facts 
themselves. Her unexpected assertion that 
certain quotations from Quimby's manu- 
scripts " were my own words, as near as I can 



The Founder of the Faith 63 

recollect them," is offset by the statement of 
Horatio W. Dresser, who like the author is 
familiar, as Mrs. Eddy is not, with the Quimby 
manuscripts in general, that the words in ques- 
tion " were from an article written by Dr. 
Quimby in 1863, copied by myself into a book, 
which Mrs, Eddy never saw, from the manu- 
script of Dr. Quimby's writings, copies from 
the original not a page of which Mrs. Eddy 
ever saw." 

To doubt in the light of Quimby's history, 
in the well-known circumstances that sur- 
rounded the production of his manuscripts, in 
the face of all the witnesses who have testified 
to the development of his healing system, in 
spite of the words of Horatio W. Dresser, who 
found, as has the author of this book, hundreds 
of pages of manuscript written before Mrs. 
Eddy ever went to Dr. Quimby containing 
" a very original and complete statement of the 
data and theory of mental healing," that Quim- 
by had a healing system of his own for which 
he owed no debt to Mrs. Eddy, is to prove one- 
self unappreciative of the psychology of in- 
tellectual production and literary expression. 

To dispel the morbid fancies of the moody 
Cowper, Lady Austen once told him the old 
story of the London citizen riding to Edmon- 



64 Christian Science 

ton, and ever since that day John Gilpin, 
started by the word of Cowper, has been gal- 
loping through the thoroughfare of Anglo- 
Saxon verse, and Lady Austen never once 
claimed any credit in the matter. 

Dr. Quimby had started on his mental 
healing course years before his most dis- 
tinguished patient ever heard of him. The 
most she ever did for him who did so much for 
her, was to give to him while he was alive the 
appreciation precious beyond words to every 
doctor, and after he was dead fulsome verse in 
which she made " sackcloth clothe the sun and 
day grow night." And then, as years went by 
and ambition grew with what it fed on, she 
began to claim first that she had started 
Quimby on his course, then that she, not he, had 
planned the course, and last, that he had not 
taken any course at all of mental healing, but 
was a mere mesmerist. And only in the high 
noon of this year's publicity has truth crushed 
to earth risen once again to the defence of 
Quimby and the depreciation of his one-time 
friend and pupil-patient. 

When Mrs. Eddy, then Mrs. Patterson, was 
helped up the stairs in October, 1862, to Dr. 
Quimby 's office, she was " a frail shadow of a 
woman." The beauty of her early woman- 
hood was gone.^ Pale, emaciated, shabby. 



The Founder of the Faith 65 

the stamp of poverty as well as illness on her 
face and form, her first request of Quimby 
was to assist her to secure an inexpensive 
boarding-place. Three weeks later she left 
him, a well woman, — well in body and in mind. 
Quimby had cured her of her nervous trouble, 
but that was the least that he had done for her. 
He had given her the idea which was to domi- 
nate her whole life, the rock on which she was 
by and by to build her church, against which 
she has been wont ever since stoutly to assert 
" the gates of hell shall not prevail." 

What she had ever heard before of the idea 
we may not know. Mrs. Eddy is the only 
witness who can testify and she contradicts 
herself. She told the " Masters," August 
14th, in the recent lawsuit, that the idea came 
to her before her eighteenth year. But she 
has in other instances borne different testi- 
mony. The one thing we surely know is this : 
She had at last a great idea. It came to her 
in all its force and fulness with Quimby's 
stamp on it. But it was hers ; hers even to the 
repudiation — ^if she pleased — of the Quimby 
stamp. Generous to carelessness, scientific 
in the true sense of claiming no proprietary 
right in any truth he found, Quimby went on 
his way in cheerful godHness. 

For many a year Mrs. Eddy seemed to be 



66 Christian Science 

the winner in the so-called Quimby contro- 
versy. But this year she is losing, and at the 
age of eighty-six, when " visions that charm 
and bless " alone should visit her, Mrs. Eddy 
has to face the ghost of her ungenerosity which 
has enlarged her fame as founder of the 
Christian Science Church at the expense of 
her reputation as a woman. Even from the 
standpoint of mere policy, it has been a mis- 
take not to acknowledge in these later years, 
as she did in the earlier ones, the efficient 
source of the idea on which she has erected a 
structure Quimby would never claim as his, 
but which could not have been built at all ex- 
cept on the foundation laid by Quimby in the 
receptive mind of Mrs. Eddy. 

It was in Lynn, where she and her husband 
lived a while before their final separation, that 
she had the great experience from which in 
later years she dated her discovery of Chris- 
tian Science. Returning February 1, 1866, 
from the " lodge," she slipped and fell on 
the icy sidewalk, sustaining a nervous shock 
which the physician. Dr. A. M. Cushing, at 
once ameliorated and in a fortnight cured, 

Mrs. Eddy's recollection materially differs 
from her doctor's. ^^ She thinks she was 
critically ill. The doctor tells me she was not 



The Founder of the Faith (>1 

and he never said she was. He says she had 
sustained a nervous shock, which every doctor 
understands. She says that after his first 
visit she ceased to take his medicines. He 
tells me that she told another story at the time 
and that he had satisfying proof that she did 
follow to the letter his directions. She de- 
scribes in some detail how she depended solely 
upon God, read the story in the Bible of the 
healing of the palsied man by Jesus Christ, 
caught " the lost chord of Truth, healing, as 
of old, from the Divine Harmony," and the 
third day rose as one from the dead, appeared 
before the friends who had gathered in the ad- 
joining room to say good-bye to her, and was 
at first believed to be an apparition. The 
doctor, understanding that hysteria is, as Char- 
cot says, nothing but " a psychic disease," 
would not have been surprised had she ap- 
peared even earlier before her friends. 

She had done, it seemed, forevermore with 
doctors and their drugs. And yet the August 
following she called on Dr. Cushing once 
again to treat her for a cough. Belonging to 
a class of persons described by Professor 
Miinsterberg, who, through weakness of the 
powers of perception, through inattention due 
to introspection, through misdirected volition 



68 Christian Science 

or deficient suggestibility, or through some 
psychical abnormality to which Mrs. Eddy in 
her neuropathic state must then have been li- 
able, are unable, even with the best intentions, 
to recall details with precision, her word — any 
nervous patient's word — cannot count against 
the word of a trained diagnostician. Dr. 
Cushing's judgment will undoubtedly be taken 
by the medical fraternity. Mrs. Eddy's case 
is a familiar one ; her symptoms are accurately 
symptomatic of the disease. 

It was a wretched life she lived in Lynn 
after the final separation from her husband/^ 
She was physically and temperamentally un- 
fit to earn her living. She did not play suc- 
cessfully the role of the professional visitor. 
She could not efface herself in any home. She 
neither helped along nor kept hands off the 
family affairs. She could not master the sim- 
ple lesson, easily learned by normal people 
who visit much, of leaving the family, enlarged 
to take her in, more closely knit together be- 
cause she had been in it. There are families 
which still feel the strain she put upon them 
years ago. 

The Russells and the Newhalls of Lynn 
were quit of her as soon as possible. The 
Wheelers and the EUises of Swampscott 



The Founder of the Faith 69 

passed her on — no easy task. At the Crafts', 
in East Stoughton, she was made more wel- 
come, but there too she brought discord, no 
matter whose the fault. At the Websters' in 
Amesbury, though not herself perhaps a spirit- 
ualist, she trained with spiritualists until they, 
too, grew weary of her presence and had re- 
sort almost to force to send her off. Miss 
Sarah Bagley was a little kinder to her. But 
by and by Mrs. Patterson, then calling her- 
self Mrs. Glover, went to Stoughton and 
spent two years before 1870 in the home of 
Mrs. Sally Wentworth, who was more than 
kind to her. 

Of Mrs. Eddy's life there we know more 
than of her life elsewhere in those years.^^ 
Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth are not living. 
But the son, Horace T. Wentworth, the wife 
whom he brought home as a young bride, Mrs. 
Arthur L. Holmes (then Lucy Wentworth), 
and a niece, now Mrs. Catherine Isabel Clapp, 
are alive and retain vivid memories of that 
visit. They tell me the same story of a 
favourable first impression passing into the 
usual strained relationship as the daily contact 
unveiled a nature self-centred, at the cost of 
family peace and happiness. She had made 
trouble a while before between Mr. and Mrs. 



7^ Christian Science 

Crafts, and now she was sowing the seed of the 
same possibihty in the Wentworth home by- 
trying to persuade the wife to go off with her 
and practise the Quimby healing. 

Here as elsewhere there was an aloofness 
from real life that made more work for the 
housewife and that once found expression, to 
the disgust of a young mother (Mrs. Horace 
T. Wentworth) , in the characterisation of her 
new-born babe as an " embryo of human men- 
tality." Mrs. Holmes, then Lucy Wentworth, 
in her teens and devoted to Mrs. Eddy, tells 
how Mrs. Eddy put into her head the nonsense 
that she was made of finer clay than other 
members of her family. She also recalls that 
when Mrs. Eddy was not writing in her room 
or talking with the family or strolling along 
country roads, she was likely to be found, Lucy 
Wentworth with her, reading the spiritualis- 
tic journal. The Banner of Light, or the back 
numbers of the New York Ledger, with their 
stories of cloying sweetness and their high- 
pitched sentimentalism. Mrs. Southworth's 
stories seemed to have a special charm for Mrs. 
Eddy, and if her reference in a personal letter 
to ^*^ Irving' s Pickwick Papers '' ^^ be in evid- 
ence, she could not in those days have had 
much interest in Dickens. 



The Founder of the Faith 71 

Here, as elsewhere, her supreme interest was 
Quimby. For the consideration of three 
hundred dollars, to be " boarded out," she 
taught all she knew of Quimby to Mrs. Went- 
worth, who had a native talent for healing 
Mdthout medicine. In teaching Mrs. Went- 
worth she used a manuscript, which she allowed 
her pupil to copy, and which we know w^as 
Quimby's not only because Mrs. Eddy said 
so but also because it is, as I have found, al- 
most word for word identical with a Quimby 
manuscript owned by George A. Quimby, and 
in his mother's handwriting, bearing the date 
February, 1862, eight months before Mrs. 
Eddy first met Quimby. 

All those months, Mrs. Eddy was consumed 
with a desire to put the Quimby theory into a 
book. She was ever writing at it, ever trying 
to find funds for its publication. She was 
even willing that Mrs. Wentworth, without 
her husband's knowledge, should put a mort- 
gage on the place to secure the money needed. 
She talked Quimby until every one grew 
" dead tired of hearing " of him, and Mrs. 
Clapp, in imitation of the Quimby propagan- 
dist, would fold her hands softly in her lap, 
smile gently, nod her head slowly and remark : 
*' I learned this from Dr. Quimby^ and he made 



I 



72 Christian Science 

me promise to teach it to at least two persons 
before I die/'' 

There, too, in Stoughton, the inevitable hour 
struck when how to say good-bye to Mrs. 
Eddy without a scene, became the burning is- 
sue. There too, as elsewhere, it was not man- 
aged with complete success; for Mrs. Eddy 
left behind when she at last departed evidences 
of her frame of mind not to be mistaken or 
forgotten. 

The summer of 1870 found Mrs. Eddy once 
again in Lynn. She was now entering her 
fiftieth year. Her great contemporaries Lin- 
coln, Stanton, Seward, Chase, had finished 
their life work, and two of them were dead. 
Mrs. Eddy was still making ready for a career 
as remarkable in many ways as theirs. She 
was now about to taste some of the sweets of 
the success hitherto denied her. 

No evidence has yet appeared that, in the 
years that lay immediately behind, she had 
shown much interest in healing, or that she 
had much power to heal. In the Wentworth 
home, she had shrunk instinctively, like any 
other nervous woman, from the sick-bed of 
others, and had shown such a morbid fear of 
death that Mrs. Wentworth often wondered 
what there could be in her past to make death 



The Founder of the Faith 73 

seem so dreadful. Mrs. Eddy's one interest 
was to teach Quimbyism, to " carpenter " it 
out into a book, and find the means to pub- 
lish it. What she needed most was some one 
who could illustrate her theory by effective 
healing. 

Him she found in Richard Kennedy/^ a 
brown-haired, ruddy-faced, enthusiastic, good- 
natured, industrious, studious, clear-headed, 
and clean-minded youth just coming into man- 
hood. The two opened offices together. He 
healed with much success. His offices were 
crowded. Money poured into the treasury. 
At the end of eighteen months she who had 
been a poor relation and a professional visitor 
practically all her adult life found to her credit 
in the bank the neat sum of $6000. 

While her partner healed, and paid all bills 
for both, Mrs. Eddy taught, and though the 
major portion of her profits came from Rich- 
ard Kennedy's generosity she also contributed 
to the adequate bank account she now had for 
the first time. In the new atmosphere of fi- 
nancial independence, some of the small con- 
ceits and the ingratiating mannerisms began 
to disappear. She did not try so hard to 
please the uncongenial. There was no press- 
ing need. Though by no means a recluse, she 



74 Christian Science 

wanted social contact only on terms of her 
own choosing. They who would have her 
good-will had to pay the price, as Mr, Ken- 
nedy informs me, of " dancing round her like a 
Maypole." 

As months slipped by, she grew more asser- 
tive and ambitious. Once in a burst of con- 
fidence she said to her young partner, in whom 
people to this day instinctively confide, 
" Richard, I was born an unwelcome child, 
and I mean to have the whole world at my 
feet before I die." As Quimbyism in her 
thought began to grow by accretions which 
Quimby would not always have approved, she 
looked far into the future, saw a popular re- 
ligion upbuilding on the book she was one 
day to publish, and with eyes lighted by the 
supreme faith she had even then in her own 
powers she said more than once to Richard 
Kennedy, " You will hve to hear the church 
bells ring out my birthday." And the pre- 
diction has already been fulfilled. The bells 
of her own church at Concord rang out her 
birthday, July 16, 1904. 

As students multiplied, she grew more 
certain of herself. For twelve lessons, her 
first students paid her $100 each, promised 
her a life annuity of ten per cent, of all 



The Founder of the Faith 75 

their future earnings, and gave a $3000 bond 
not to show to any one the copy she allowed 
them to make of the manuscripts now grown 
from Quimby's one to three. At the end of 
three weeks she saluted them as " Doctor," and 
sent them out into the world to practise 
Quimbyism without the name of Quimby. 
Moved, she says, " by a strange providence," ^^ 
she raised her charges in a little while to $300 
for twelve lessons, reduced in later years in 
Boston to the number seven. 

Never able permanently to retain those who 
would not give their heart and mind completely 
to her keeping, she soon began to lose some of 
her more thoughtful students. Writes one of 
them to me : " As a teacher she considered her- 
self the wisdom and in all things was to be 
obeyed; any one going contrary was in rebel- 
lion and must be put down. In the class she 
strove to prejudice her students against any 
rebellious ones through awakening as much 
sympathy as possible among the loyal by in- 
forming them that she was caused both mental 
and physical suffering by their misconduct." 

One woman left her class because she 
thought Mrs. Eddy " was taking Christ away 
from her." Another through the court re- 
covered her tuition fee on the ground that she 



7^ Christian Science 

had not received her money's worths Some 
sued her; others she sued. The air was thick 
with htigation. With some of the choicest 
spirits her system broke down of sheer absurd- 
ity as she began to put it to unnecessary strain. 
One student was so disgusted by her claims 
that she could raise the dead — to which claims 
more than one have testified — that he chal- 
lenged her to give a public exhibition. ^^ 

She had her stormy differences even with her 
youthful partner, whom it would be difficult 
to-day for any one to differ with in anger, and 
after he performed the thitherto impossible 
feat in 1872 of breaking with her without any 
public scene, and went off to complete alone 
the establishment of the reputation which he 
now enjoys for courtesy and integrity, she 
followed him like any mediaeval pope with 
her anathemas, made him the occasion of the 
development of her strange obsession of Ma- 
licious Animal Magnetism, singled him out 
nine years later for furious denunciation in the 
third edition of her book, and at last dismissed 
him with the inappropriate characterisation, 
" the Nero of to-day." ^' 

But every time she lost a follower another 
came to take his place. Disciples increased 
alike in zeal and numbers. Those who came 



The Founder of the Faith 7^ 

to stay passed under the spell she put upon 
them. Her influence had no necessary rela- 
tionship to the system she was teaching. It 
would have been as dominating had she been 
preaching Comtism or Mormonism. It was 
not, as some have thought, humbuggery that 
attracted many, but a hypnotic influence — the 
power Mrs. Eddy has of profound and, to 
some, irresistible suggestion, which none of 
her conspicuous contemporaries, except per- 
haps Gladstone, had in such large measure. 

Of Mrs. Eddy and her students in those 
early days Georgine Milmine draws this vivid 
and veracious picture: 

The closer students, who constituted Mrs. Glov- 
er's cabinet and body-guard, executed her commis- 
sions, transacted her business, and were always at 
her call. To-day some of these who have long been 
accounted as enemies by Mrs. Eddy, and whom she 
has anathematised in print and discredited on the 
witness-stand, still declare that what they got from 
her was beyond equivalent in gold or silver. They 
speak of a certain emotional exaltation which she 
was able to impart in her class-room; a feeling so 
strong that it was like the birth of a new under- 
standing and seemed to open to them a new heaven 
and a new earth. Some of Mrs. Glover's students 
experienced this in a very slight degree, but such 
as were imaginative and emotional, and especially 
those who had something of the mystic in their na- 



78 Christian Science 

ture, came out of her class-room to find that for 
them the world had changed. They lived by a new 
set of values; the colour seemed to fade out of the 
physical world about them; men and women be- 
came shadow-like, and their own humanity grew 
pale. The reality of pain and pleasure, sin and 
grief, love and death, once denied, the only positive 
thing in their lives was their belief — and that was 
almost wholly negation. One of the students who 
was closest to Mrs. Glover at that time says that 
to him the world outside her little circle seemed 
like a madhouse, where each inmate was given over 
to his delusion of love or gain or ambition, and the 
problem which confronted him was how to awaken 
them from the absurdity of their pursuit. It is but 
fair to say that occasionally a student was more of 
a royalist than the king, and that Mrs. Glover her- 
self had a very sound sense of material values and 
often reminded an extravagant follower to render 
unto Caesar what was his due.^^ 

By 1875, Mrs. Eddy's following was large 
enough to warrant the establishment of per- 
manent headquarters. A house, still standing, 
was therefore bought in Lynn, and in a low- 
ceiled room on the third floor Mrs. Eddy com- 
pleted, with money furnished her by her 
students, the manuscript of Science and 
Health, gave it to the world, and prepared the 
second and third editions for her publishers. 

It was this year that Daniel H» Spofford 



The Founder of the Faith 79 

cast in his fortunes with her. They had met 
four years before. He had since become in- 
terested in her work, made a careful study of 
her manuscripts, and won some reputation as a 
healer. In April, 1875, she induced him to 
join her class, treated him with marked dis- 
tinction, gave him the pen with which she 
wrote Science and Health,, made him treasurer 
of the Christian Science Association formed 
next month for the conduct of Sunday services 
in a public hall, and when the following au- 
tumn her book fell still-born from the press, it 
was to Mr. Spofford that she turned to ad- 
vertise and push its sale. A gentle dreamer, 
ever on spiritual business bound, Daniel H. 
Spofford had none of Richard Kennedy's im- 
pulsiveness and easy savoir faire. But he had 
the same sense of devotion to his duty as he 
saw it. 

Like Mr. Kennedy, effective as a healer, Mr. 
Spofford was successful also as a teacher. 
Complications, however, came as usual, and 
various explanations have been given of them. 
The next spring it was evident that Mrs. 
Eddy was cooling toward her favourite.^^ 
The summer brought the open break, and in 
January, 1877, Mr. Spofford was expelled 
from the Christian Science Association on the 



So Christian Science 

serious charge of immorahty, by which Mrs. 
Eddy simply meant disloyalty to her.^^ 

As she had followed and was still following 
Richard Kennedy with her frenzied thought, 
charging him with mesmerism, developing in 
her heated mind the curious theory of mali- 
cious animal magnetism which was not found 
in Quimbyism, so now she followed Mr. Spof- 
f ord, mild and serene as he was, to the ridicu- 
lous extremity of causing him to be haled into 
the Salem court in the spring of 1878 on the 
charge of witchcraft, which the judge dis- 
missed with the smiling explanation that " it 
was not within the power of the court to 
control Mr. Spofford's mind." ^^ The last 
strange chapter in as strange a story as ever 
yet was told of Mrs. Eddy's strange career 
was the indictment the following December of 
Asa Gilbert Eddy, Mrs. Eddy's husband, and 
Edward J. Arens, one of her students, by the 
grand jury on the charge of conspiracy to 
murder Daniel H. Spofford. The evidence 
was dubious and inconsequential. No infer- 
ence can to-day be drawn from it except that 
there was probably hysteria on one side and 
panic on the other. The case was nolle 
prossedj, and never came to trial.^^ Mr. Eddy 
paid the costs, and Mr. Spofford still lives and 



The Founder of the Faith 8i 

at the age of sixty-five enjoys the confidence 
of those who know him well. 

It was through Mr. Spofford that Mrs. Eddy 
met Asa Gilbert Eddy. Her first husband had 
been dead thirty years and more. She had 
been divorced in 1873 from Dr. Patterson, and 
it was to Mrs. Glover, and not Mrs. Patter- 
son, that Mr. Spofford presented one of his 
new patients, Asa Gilbert Eddy. To speak 
with gravity of this new friend, who, unlike 
many another, came into Mrs. Eddy's life to 
stay, is far from easy. When after five years of 
married bliss he passed from earth, Mrs. Eddy 
surmned him up with the Psalmist's challenge, 
" Mark the perfect man." ^^ But Mrs. Eddy's 
standard of perfection was evidently not the 
Psalmist's. Unquestioning obedience to her 
has invariably sufficed to uptilt the horn of 
adulation even on the stupidest head. 

From Mrs. Eddy's point of view Asa Gil- 
bert Eddy was " a perfect man." Promoted 
from sewing-machine agent to successful 
pedler of Mrs. Eddy's precious book, from 
pedler elevated to the high dignity of hus- 
band to the author, Asa Gilbert Eddy yielded 
to his spouse the tmquestioning obedience 
necessary to retain his place. He was a handy 
man for any wife to have about the house. He 



82 Christian Science 

did what he was told to do. He would solicit 
students for his wife or take up the collection 
at the Sunday service when she preached the 
sermon. His sister-in-law remembers that 
" he could do up a shirt as well as any woman." 
Dull but thrifty, slow but steady, stolid but 
dutiful, superstitious but amiable, Mrs. Eddy's 
third husband furnished a better background 
for her erratic brilliancy than she had ever had 
before. Not even in her wildest dreams could 
Mrs. Eddy foresee in her docile helpmate, as 
in Mr. Spoiford, a potential rival. No one 
would be likely, in all human probability, to 
rally to the rebel standard of a slow little man 
in a cinnamon-coloured overcoat and a fur 
cap, which he was known to wear, without 
sense of incongruity, even in the summer. 

The marriage was a genuine surprise to all. 
To be sure the grand dame had allowed the 
little man to call her " Mary " in the class- 
room, but even then the announcement of the 
engagement was too sudden to be credible. 
When Mr. Spofford received from Eddy's 
hand the note that brought the news he re- 
marked : " You 've been very quiet about all 
this, Gilbert." " Indeed, Dr. Spofford," the 
prospective groom replied, " I did n't know a 
thing about it myself until last night.' 



>' 24 



The Founder of the Faith 83 

On New Year's Day, 1877, Mrs. Glover, 
aged fifty-six, though the age appeared as 
forty in the marriage hcense, led to the altar 
the man of forty whom she took for her third 
trial marriage, and so well was she impressed 
with him that after three days, with that scant 
sense of the eternal fitness of things of which 
Mrs. Eddy has often given illustration in her 
life, she wrote one of her students : " I feel 
sure that I can teach my husband up to a 
higher usefulness, to purity, and the higher de- 
velopment of all his latent noble ^^ qualities 
of head and heart." 

He was willing to be taught. He would 
even turn docility into self-effacement. There 
is no evidence that he objected to Mrs. Eddy's 
use of the editorial " we " in writing of herself 
or to her reference to him as " our husband." 
The marriage was, she says, a spiritual one. 
She had already made him " Doctor " after 
his twelve lessons with her in the art of healing. 
Now that he was completely hers, she made 
him " the first organiser of a Christian Science 
Sunday-school, which he superintended. He 
also," she says, "taught a special Bible-class; 
and he lectured so ably on scriptural topics, 
that clergymen of other denominations listened 
to him with deep interest. He was remarkably 



84 Christian Science 

successful in mind-healing, and untiring in his 
chosen work. In 1882 he passed away, with 
a smile of peace and love resting on his serene 
countenance." And Mrs. Eddy spoke her 
" Well done, good and faithful servant " in 
these words : " Mark the perfect man, and be- 
hold the upright; for the end of that man is 
peace." ^^ 

A quarter of a century has gone since Mrs. 
Eddy was the last time widowed, and she has 
had no husband since to do her will. But in 
Calvin A. Frye,^^ steward, bookkeeper, secre- 
tary, coachman, her " man of all work " as she 
herself has called him, she has had the while 
one singularly devoted to her and to her 
interests. To serve her he gave up all at 
the outset. Family ties were relinquished. 
Friendships were allowed to languish. It is 
said that never since the day he came, not 
knowing what her purpose was, in answer to 
her telegram, has he been beyond the reach of 
her voice for a whole day. Though from 1882 
to 1900 he received only ten to twelve dollars a 
week and board, and for the last four years 
has been paid at most one hundred dollars a 
month and board, he has, according to his affi- 
davit in the suit entitled Eddy vs. Frye et als,, 
received in money and jewelry presents 



The Founder of the Faith 8$ 

amounting in value to $7300, and now has in 
bank $11,000 to his credit. In addition, Mrs. 
Eddy, for reasons not divulged in his affidavit, 
at one time or another has assigned to him cer- 
tain copyrights of her publications, deeds to 
her home, and to various other properties, and 
has had them at her will reassigned to her. 

Stories have been so freely circulated by 
many — among them Dr. E. J. Foster, whom 
she adopted in 1882 but who according 
to his own report was driven out of Mrs. Ed- 
dy's heart and home by Frye's influence — of 
the unusual authority exercised by a coachman- 
secretary, that suit was, March 1st, instituted 
by her son and others to break this authority 
once for all. Frye's reply in his affidavit was 
that Mrs Eddy is sole manager of her affairs. 
Those nearest to her testified in the same 
terms. Mrs. Eddy stated clearly, June 15th, 
to a representative of the Boston Globe, " No 
living person abridges my rights in this house 
or governs my actions." Dr. Edward French, 
the expert alienist, July 10th, " was impressed 
with her intelligence and business ability " 
and pronounced her " competent to manage 
her own affairs." And no less an alienist than 
Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton found, August 
12th, that " she is competent to take care of 



86 Christian Science 

herself and manage her affairs and that she is 
not coerced in any way." It was therefore 
wise for the " next friends," whatever may 
have been their motive, to abandon their law- 
suit on August 21st. 

With a name, a book, a tentative organisa- 
tion, and headquarters. Christian Science was 
fairly launched by 1875. On the centennial 
of the nation's birthday in 1876 the organisa- 
tion was perfected and April 19, 1879, it was 
turned into a church. A charter was obtained 
in August, and Mrs. Eddy, called the same 
year by the little flock of twenty-six to be their 
pastor, was ordained in 1881.^^ 

The church was not, however, an immediate 
success. Lynn was already growing weary of 
the new faith and its founder. She was so 
often in the courts that the Boston papers 
were headlining her troubles with increasing 
facetiousness. Students one by one withdrew 
till once she had but two left. She was 
meanwhile, under the great strain, growing 
so difficult to satisfy that even her obedient 
husband once confided to a friend that he did 
'* not beHeve God Almighty could please Mrs. 
Eddy." Realising that there was nothing 
more that she could do in Lynn she dissolved 
her little church of less than fifty members, 



The Founder of the Faith 87 

and early in the winter of 1882 beat a wise re- 
treat to Boston. 

She had for several years been reconnoi- 
tring there, — lecturing occasionally in 1878 in 
a Baptist church on Shawmut Avenue and in 
1879 giving Sunday afternoon talks in the 
Parker Fraternity Building, on Appleton 
Street, to audiences ranging from twenty-five 
to fifty. By 1880 there were a few Christian 
Scientists meeting every week at the home of 
Mrs. Clara Choate. On Dec. 12, 1880, the 
services were transferred to the Hawthorne 
rooms on Park Street, and before Mrs. Eddy 
removed to Boston her habit was to come up 
every Sunday from Lynn, conduct the ser- 
vice, and preach the sermon. 

In 1881 a charter was secured for the Mas- 
sachusetts Metaphysical College. The college 
was at first designed to help her to rehabilitate 
herself in Lynn. It never had a building of 
its own. It met in Mrs. Eddy's parlour, and 
its faculty, consisting solely of Mrs. Eddy, was 
not as large as the faculty of that western col- 
lege which Mr. Bryce once to his amusement 
found was made up of the president and his 
versatile wife. But the college grew in the 
face of all discouragements and out of it de- 
veloped various organisations. At last in 1886 



88 Christian Science 

the National Christian Science Association 
was formed, which met in general convention 
in New York City February 11, 1886. From 
Science and Health sprang new editions in be- 
wildering frequency with passing years, vari- 
ous smaller books and brochures^ The Chris- 
tian Science Journal^ published once a month 
and now in its twenty-fifth year, and at last 
The Christian Science Sentinel^ this year in 
its ninth volume. 

Mrs. Eddy was now coming to her own. 
Her organisations were developing. She too 
was growing steadily in the power to express 
herself with pen and tongue. There were 
still vagueness and verbosity in both her priv- 
ate correspondence and her published writings. 
But there was also a new ease evident. She 
was learning somewhat of the art of feather- 
ing the arrow of expression. More import- 
ant still, she was beginning to submit her liter- 
ary productions to others for censorship ere she 
gave them forth to that cold world which still 
is slow to take her at her own high valuation. 

Astute beyond description Mrs. Eddy had 
discovered that to make the most profound im- 
pression on an audience one must not speak 
too often and one must never speak except 
when in the speaking mood. She now began 



The Founder of the Faith 89 

to limit the number of her public addresses 
and never hesitated to break her Sunday ap- 
pointment if she were not " in the Spirit on the 
Lord's day." Her substitutes had to be ready 
at short notice to officiate and sometimes even 
then " after the audience at Hawthorne Hall 
had been waiting for perhaps half an hour, 
Mrs. Eddy's carriage would swing into Park 
Street, the horses on a trot, and she would 
ahght amid a crowd of delighted students, 
sweep rapidly up the aisle, ascend the rostrum, 
and at once begin to deliver one of her most 
effective sermons." 

A critic who heard her in the eighties in the 
pulpit and the class-room pays this tribute to 
her singular impressiveness : 

" From hearing Mrs. Eddy preach, from reading 
her books, from talking to her, one does not get an 
adequate idea of her mental powers, unless one 
hears her also in her classes. Not only is she glow- 
ingly earnest in presenting her convictions, but her 
language and illustrations are remarkable. She 
is quick in repartee, and keenly turns a jest upon 
her questioner, but not offensively or unkindly. 
She reads faces rapidly. A brief exposition of the 
Book of Job, which one day entered incidentally 
into her statement of how God is found, would do 
honour to any ecclesiastic. Critical listeners are 
frequently astonished at the strength of her argu- 



go Christian Science 

ment and cogency of her reasoning, even when they 
cannot fully agree with her conclusions. While she 
is quick to detect variations from her own views, 
and to argue the point, she maintains the utmost 
repose in every debate. In fact, she is a natural 
class-leader, and three hours pass quickly away in 
her lessons." ^9 

At first she hved at 569, then at 571, Colum- 
bus Avenue, and in 1887 purchased a house in 
the Back Bay district, 385 Commonwealth 
Avenue,^^ where the First Reader of the 
Mother Church is now directed by the Manual 
to reside. Her house was her strategic point 
for doing things and managing people. 
Classes were meeting all day long. There was 
little social intercourse and no idling. But there 
was much self -consciousness grown morbid 
through Mrs. Eddy's over-emphasis of ma- 
licious animal magnetism. She herself was 
troubled with nocturnal hysteria which she in- 
variably ascribed to " M. A. M." as she famil- 
iarly designated it. It was not unusual for 
the whole family and even students living near 
to be called up at night to give her mental 
treatment. If the wash-boiler leaked or the 
waterpipes froze, " M. A. M." was the malign 
agent to be withstood by the united effort of 
the little band of her retainers, whom at last 
she organised into the " P. M. Society," to 



The Founder of the Faith 91 

present a solid front to the unseen and malig- 
nant foe. For years her house was the " House 
of Mesmer," and " resembled nothing so much 
as one of the small Italian courts of the fif- 
teenth century; reputations were made or lost 
by an accident, and the favourite of to-day was 
the exile of to-morrow." ^^ It was in her home 
that she tested those who came her way. She 
drew them closer to her if she thought that she 
could use them; she sent them off if they 
would not do her will. 

Sometimes her liking for new people was 
so quick and irresistible that she at once made 
them members of her household. One man, 
Dr. E. J. Foster, she legally adopted as her 
son, gave him the name of Foster-Eddy, had 
him live in her house, and serve her as account- 
ant and publisher. His story of how his posi- 
tion was made impossible by another favourite 
of Mrs. Eddy's and how at last he fled in great 
alarm and still fears for his life, reads like a 
page from the Arabian Nights, Another, a 
woman, the cleverest perhaps that ever basked 
in Mrs. Eddy's sunshine for a season, became 
ambitious, claimed to have pushed Mrs. Ed- 
dy's views on the spiritual propagation of the 
species to their logical conclusion of " imma- 
culate conception," and — to quote the title of 



92 Christian Science 

the book she later wrote — in the War in 
Heaven which resulted, suffered the fate of 
Satan in Milton's poem. 

Out of all the experiments of past years 
has been developed Mrs. Eddy's present cabi- 
net, including Alfred Farlow, devoted to her 
now these twenty years and her official spokes- 
man ; Archibald McClellan, man of affairs and 
editor of the Christian Science periodicals, H. 
S. Hering, First Reader in her church at Con- 
cord; Rev. Irving C. Tomlinson, a Congre- 
gational preacher turned Christian Scientist 
and now her loyal follower: Mrs. Laura E. 
Sargeant, her household companion and con- 
fidant for fifteen years ; H. Cornell Wilson, her 
secretary; and Calvin A. Frye, who is, ac- 
cording to reports, nearer to Mrs. Eddy than 
any one else.^^ 

The year 1889 is an epochal date in Mrs. 
Eddy's later history. It marks the closing of 
some of her efforts, the acceleration of others, 
and the initiation of new ones. She was now 
entering on the last and largest stage of her 
public life. Her college had, she says, suc- 
ceeded beyond her fondest hopes. It was not 
merely filled, it was " flooded," with students 
paying their $300 for a three weeks' course in 
mental healing. Students came not only from 



The Founder of the Faith 93 

America but from Europe too, — and in 1889 
there were 300 on the waiting list. The un- 
precedented popularity of the institution gave 
Mrs. Eddy some concern. " Example has 
shown," she writes, " the danger arising from 
being placed on earthly pinnacles, and Chris- 
tian Science shuns whatever involves material 
means for the promotion of spiritual ends." ^^ 

But there was another circumstance which 
possibly gave some concern, if one may read 
between the Hues of her discussion of it. Ac- 
cording to her words, the college charter she 
obtained in 1881 brought with it " the right 
to grant degrees." The act on which the grant 
was based, however, was repealed in 1882. 
Next year the conferring of " any diploma or 
degree " by a " corporation " or " associa- 
tion," was made punishable by the courts. 
Mrs. Eddy claimed that her college did not fall 
under the heading of a " corporation " or 
" association " and was therefore in no wise 
affected by the law. But when there was 
some reason in 1889 to expect that her inter- 
pretation was not to be accepted without a 
test, she closed her college, — and the subject.^* 

Fertile as ever in resource, leaving nothing 
to chance, forestalhng difficulties that might 
later prove embarrassing, she at once gave her 



94 Christian Science 

students a new interest and by a bold stroke 
rallied all who might possibly have been dis- 
couraged by the closing of the college to the 
support of the church now, after some experi- 
mentation, to be developed to its utmost pos- 
sibilities. The first proper step in the new 
policy was evidently to erect a building 
large enough to meet the growing needs 
of Christian Science and attractive enough 
to lure the casual. Before the year was at 
an end Mrs. Eddy gave as a site for the 
new church a lot worth, she says, " twenty 
thousand dollars," which had come to her for 
$5000, " in a circuitous and novel way " ^^ — 
to quote her own words, " materially question- 
able," " the wisdom of which a few persons 
have since scrupled." It was on this lot that 
the granite building with a seating capacity 
of 1500 was erected in 1894 at a cost of $221,- 
000, which now stands as a frontispiece to the 
colossal temple, seating 5000, completed in 
1906, at a cost of $2,000,000. 

It was a happy day for Mrs. Eddy when in 
1889, actuated in part by patriotic sentiment, 
she removed to Concord, New Hampshire, 
a few miles from her birthplace. She 
was approaching the time limit which the 
psalmist sets for normal human life, but her 



The Founder of the Faith 95 

natural force was far from spent. She was 
passing on toward old age with less infirmity 
than she had often felt in earlier years. And 
yet it was well for her that she then withdrew 
to Concord. The strife of tongues, the clash- 
ings of ambition, the inevitable frictions of a 
growing church, the " constant troubles in Bos- 
ton " might possibly have qualified the unique 
prestige she enjoyed had she been near enough 
to be tempted to take a hand in all of them.^^ 

It was Mahomet withdrawn to Medina who 
later dominated Mecca, and it was Mrs. Eddy 
removed to Concord who won prophetic em- 
inence in Boston.^^ If a new religion is to 
come to large proportions a cloud of mystery 
must some day gather round the head of the 
originator. 

The founder of Christian Science has been 
fortunate to have her personality take on a 
little mystery before her death. At Concord 
she has been far enough away to arrange with 
dramatic detail the infrequent epiphany of 
pilgrims who have come from far and near to 
break their alabaster box upon her feet and to 
receive upon their reverent heads her blessing 
from the balcony of Pleasant View. At Con- 
cord she has not been so far away but that she 
could keep the reins of government well within 



g6 Christian Science 

her practised hands as those about her testify 
has been and is to-day her habit. 

Christian Science is a movement of signifi- 
cance from the point of view of numbers. Mrs. 
Eddy claims more than a miUion followers. 
Certainly the whole world over there are those 
who call her blessed, and who prove their grati- 
tude by building costly and commodious 
churches. The Christian Science congrega- 
tions number now at least a thousand, of which 
perhaps three hundred are not regularly or- 
ganised under state laws but are simply 
societies holding public services. The Mother 
Church in Boston reported June 11, 1907, a 
membership of 43,876, and the total member- 
ship of the 64<5 branch churches which have re- 
ported, is now 42,846.^^ 

The aggregate membership, however, is not 
so large as might appear; for as the Publica- 
tion Committee writes me, " All the members 
of the branch churches are eligible to member- 
ship in the Mother Church and I think it is 
safe to assume that a very large percentage of 
them belong to that society." To the enrol- 
ment, therefore, of 42,846 in the branch 
churches must be added not all the 43,876 in 
the Mother Church but only that relatively 
small percentage of them who are members of 



The Founder of the Faith 97 

no church except the Mother Church. But 
on the other hand, the Committee on Pubhca- 
tion bids us to remember, that there are many 
Christian Scientists at heart who are " situated 
as to their family relations and otherwise so 
that it does not seem advisable to sever their 
old connections at the present time and for 
that reason it is not easy to estimate the num- 
ber of those who are actually interested." ^^ 

However numerous Christian Scientists 
may be, Mrs. Eddy is their ruler absolute.*^ 
No earthly potentate has the authority which 
Mrs. Eddy now enjoys. If the whole world 
is not yet at her feet as she hopes it may be be- 
fore she dies, she has worshippers enough to 
give some pertinence to proud ambition. Na- 
poleon's one hope to perpetuate his throne was 
through a son. Mrs. Eddy is content to per- 
petuate her pulpit by a book. No one can 
succeed her in the Christian Science pulpit, 
which nowhere has a preacher, and ip the 
place of a preacher. Science and Healthy read 
by a reader chosen with her approval, is every- 
where the Sunday sermon in connection with 
and in comment on the Bible. 

Those who would know how absolute is 
Mrs. Eddy's will must read not Science and 
Health but the Manual of the Mother Church 



98 Christian Science 

in Boston, of which it should always be remem- 
bered most Christian Scientists in the land are 
members. Mrs. Eddy claims for the Manual, 
prepared in 1892, as for Science and Health, 
that it was in its origin " impelled by a power 
not one's own." ^^ If Science and Health 
surprises one by its extraordinary theories^ the 
Manual amazes us by the powers it entrusts 
to Mrs. Eddy. 

Pastor Emeritus to Science and Health and | 

not to any pastor in the flesh, Mrs. Eddy has J 

all the authority she had when she was pastor 
without the wear and tear of pastoral relation- 
ship. The Church has its directors and trustees 
but they are responsible to Mrs. Eddy. The 
Church elects its readers but always from a 
list approved by Mrs. Eddy, and she can re- 
move a reader without assigning any reason 
for her act. 

Every application for membership must be 
passed upon by Mrs. Eddy. Every Christian 
Scientist is responsible to her for even some of 
the incidental interests of life. No Christian 
Scientist may read books on hypnotism or may 
patronise any publishers or booksellers who 
have books for sale that criticise the cause. No 
Christian Scientist may make bold to stroll by 
Pleasant View or to haunt Mrs. Eddy's drive 



The Founder of the Faith 99 

or spend a while in Concord with the thought 
of seeing her. No Christian Scientist, either 
man or woman, may refuse at Mrs. Eddy's 
call to leave business, home, and kindred and 
go to live with her at Pleasant View for years 
if she so orders. 

On each instance of infraction of these rules, 
Mrs. Eddy sits in judgment. She acts also as 
jury, and from her decision there is no appeal. 
She professes actual infallibility in dealing 
with those who practise hypnotism. " I pos- 
sess," she says, " a spiritual sense of what the 
malicious mental practitioner is mentally argu- 
ing, which cannot be deceived; I can discern 
in the human mind thoughts, motives, and pur- 
poses; and neither mental arguments nor psy- 
chic power can affect this spiritual insight." ^^ 

The directors of the Christian Science edu- 
cational work are chosen subject to her ap- 
proval, and she is president of the board 
besides. There are teachers, lecturers, mis- 
sionaries — chosen ever with her consent — and 
even the minor employees of the Publishing 
Society are not selected save with her ap- 
proval and are removable at her discretion. 

Especially important is the Committee on 
Publication consisting of one member chosen 
with Mrs. Eddy's sanction, and receiving a 



TOO Christian Science 

salary of at least $4000 a year. His business 
is to conduct the Christian Science propa- 
ganda through the press the whole world 
over, to correct misapprehensions in regard 
to Christian Science, to answer criticisms of 
Mrs. Eddy and the cause, and "to circulate in 
large quantities " his published answers. No 
explanation of the growth of Christian Science 
can be adequate that does not give full credit 
to the Committee on Publication. During Mr. 
Alfred Farlow's term of office, these eight 
years past, the Press Bureau has been brought 
to a high degree of efficiency. 

Mrs. Eddy may be described as a Mona 
Lisa. If in the light of Mrs. Eddy's history, 
one may not say, 

" She remains from perturbation free, 
This woman that hath made all life her own/' ^^ 

one may say that opinions of Mrs. Eddy differ 
as widely as those concerning the inscrutable 
woman who looks out from Leonardo's puz- 
zling picture. 

To some Mrs. Eddy has for many years 
seemed but the passive tool of designing men 
who play upon her vanity to put money in 
their purse. To others she is not merely, as 
one close to her has written me, the purest, 
wisest, most unselfish of women,^^ but also as 



The Founder of the Faith loi 

another devotee has said, " the transparency 
to this age, for the reflection of God to 
mankind." ^^ 

Whatever secrets may he hid behind her se- 
rene face,^^ Mrs. Eddy is no ordinary woman. 
She is rich, famous, popular, and powerful. 
Author of a book which many thousands set 
above the Bible and study with devoutness 
every day, Mrs. Eddy has accumulated a great 
fortune out of its enormous sale. Head of a 
large and growing organisation of her own 
creation and as compact and obedient to her 
every wish as a modern army, Mrs. Eddy 
is beloved by all her subjects and by many of 
them practically deified. 

Distinction either in authorship or organisa- 
tion never comes by chance. With a great 
price it is purchased. To win world-wide 
fame, which thousands are profoundly sure 
will prove undying, both in authorship and 
organisation, is an achievement only those will 
underestimate who have not tried to purchase 
either. 

And yet all the way along these forty years 
of such singleness of purpose as probably has 
never been surpassed by womankind, Mrs. 
Eddy has had heavy handicaps. 

Always frail in health, she has not 



102 Christian Science 

infrequently been positively ill. Untrained 
in early life to think, to write, to achieve, she 
was past fifty before she found herself. The 
impecunious sport of fortune, ill-fated in one 
marriage, unhappy in another, unaffected to 
any considerable extent by a third, thirty years 
out of her long life were filled with embarrass- 
ments, discouragements, mortifications, and 
temptations. 

Interested more in her idea than in the peo- 
ple it drew to her she has suffered the for- 
lornness which comes to those who sacrifice 
relationships to ideas. " I am alone in the 
world," she wrote to her son in 1898; "more 
alone than a solitary star. . . . My home is 
simply a house and a beautiful landscape. 
There is not one in it that I love, only as I love 
everybody." ^^ 

Ambitious to have the whole world at her 
feet she has been teacher, leader, " Mother 
Mary," everything except the simple friend 
giving and receiving on those terms of 
entire equality which ensure the happiest as 
well as richest life. That was why a woman 
in whose home she took her meals in 1872 once 
said after a sharp censure received from Mrs. 
Eddy : " That woman is either a saint or a 
devil: I 'm sure I don't know which." *^ The 



The Founder of the Faith 103 j 

only thing of which anybody could be sure 
was that Mrs. Eddy was never to be taken on 
terms of equality by any one who crossed her 
path. 

A determination unshaken through the years 
to win her point at any cost has brought its 
incidental disadvantages. People of fine sen- 
sibilities instinctively distrust the woman who | 
airs her grievances in court. Mrs. Eddy has 
been in court too often for her own best in- 
terests. She has too often turned to strat- | 
egy. And when the recent lawsuit was begun 
it seemed at first to some as though there was 
to be at last ironical illustration of the words 
of Him who never went to law: " They that 
take the sword shall perish with the sword." 

With the head of the Mother Church set- 
ting all through life a questionable example, it 
was natural for the directors of the Church to 
expose Christian Science to the humiliation of 
the other day when the Massachusetts Su- 
preme Court decided that not merely had the 
directors in the building of the new church 
broken a legal contract but that they had also 
entered into a conspiracy with the labour 
union. The leader of a religious movement 
embarrasses the cause in unexpected ways by 
frequent lawsuits and by legal subterfuges.^^ 



I04 Christian Science 

Love of money has been the root of many 
an ill in Mrs. Eddy's life. Spiritual gifts are 
too precious to be habitually prostituted to the 
accumulation of dollars even though the dol- 
lars are designed at last for the perpetuation 
of a church. It jars the spirit to turn 
from Mrs. Eddy's claim that Science and 
Health is " God's Book and He says give 
it at once to the people " ^^ to her suggestion 
of some years ago that it pays to be a Chris- 
tian Scientist, to her sometime admission that 
Christian Science healers have made " their 
comfortable fortunes," and to her insistence 
on selling what she distinctly and steadily as- 
serts is a spiritual necessity at a profit which 
has led in the case of corporations having a 
monopoly of the physical necessities of life to 
government investigation and universal repro- 
bration. To have a fortune of admittedly 
about a million dollars accruing largely from 
the sale of a Book of Revelation which con- 
tains " nothing of human opinion " ^^ and yet 
for years to evade one's proportionate share of 
taxpaying, even though one gives back in other 
ways large sums to the community in which 
©ne lives, is to put too great a strain on public 
confidence. 

But Mrs. Eddy's heaviest handicap has been 
her habitual sense of blamelessness. To claim 



The Founder of the Faith 105 

inerrancy in judgment would be incredible 
enough. To claim, besides, always to have 
been correct in conduct is to overtax credulity. 
To profess to be, in a unique sense, of " divine 
origin," to be one with God in authorship, to 
be " only a scribe echoing the harmonies of 
heaven," to have a revelation " higher, clearer, 
and more permanent " than Jesus had, and 
steadily to deny in the face of every fact that 
she has ever been at fault in all the many dif- 
ficulties she has had with others is to invite an 
analogy to Jesus which her record cannot 
stand. If only her family had found some 
fault with her, one would remember that the 
relatives of Jesus never took Him at his proper 
valuation. If only the clergy and the doctors 
had been scandalised by Mrs. Eddy's words 
and works, one would instinctively recall that 
it was the common people who heard Jesus 
gladly. But, unhappily, those who have been 
most severe on Mrs. Eddy all these years have 
been her own familiar friends, even her dis- 
ciples chosen by her own free will, from the 
days when Mrs. Crosby, as she still admits, 
found pleasure in her company till not many 
years ago when Mrs. Eddy learned how to 
bind disciples to her with hoops of steel by 
assuring them a comfortable income while they 
practise their discipleship. 



io6 Christian Science 

Among the twelve there was one Judas, only 
one. It has been the lament of Mrs. Eddy's 
long career, especially before she moved to 
Concord, that there have been many Judases 
among her twelve. Jesus let his solitary 
Judas go out into the night and into the last- 
ing detestation of the world without a word 
of execration. As Judas after Judas has for- 
saken Mrs. Eddy's communion, he has gone 
out, with infrequent exceptions, into the day- 
light of a friendly world sometimes to be fol- 
lowed through long years by Mrs. Eddy's 
fiery fulminations. How could it be other- 
wise with thirty-six of those nearest to her and 
most prominent withdrawing at one time af- 
ter planning first to expel her from her 
church? ^^ If now in the fulness of her fame 
she would, like the great and good of ages 
past, acknowledge that she has not always had 
the right of it in all the strained relationships 
of life, particularly in the Quimby contro- 
versy, the voice of criticism would even now, 
though late, lose its sharpness, her reputation 
for generosity would be enhanced, and the 
golden thread, which runs through the strange 
pattern of her long career, would be more 
evident. But so long as she continues to in- 
quire — as she did on August 25th ^^ — " Have 



The Founder of the Faith 107 

I ever injured any one?" inviting thus the 
still unanswered challenge of the Man of Naz- 
areth " Which of you convinceth me of sin? ", 
only those can find her faultless who doubt the 
infallibility of that intuition which, she says, 
enables her to " discern in the human mind 
thoughts, motives, and purposes " or who un- 
der her spell are blind to the indisputable fact 
that many a disciple Mrs. Eddy to-day re- 
gards as a Judas has gone out from her be- 
cause the disillusionment of close relationship 
with her or intimate acquaintance with her 
theory has disclosed the arrant folly of build- 
ing any house upon the sand. 

Mrs. Eddy will be judged in years to come 
not by her authorship, nor by the efficient or- 
ganisation she has built up, but by her daily 
life along the past now lit at last by informa- 
tion. Ambition, avarice, love of fame and 
power may have their place in the career of 
a Wolsey, an Elizabeth, a Richelieu, and a Na- 
poleon. In the life of a true religious leader, 
they have no proper place, and after Mrs. 
Eddy's death has broken the spell of " the 
grand old hypnotist," ^^ the world will see her 
as she is with all her faults as well as all her 
virtues, to which those nearest her bear con- 
stant witness. 



CHAPTER V 

THE PHILOSOPHY 

A Phase of Idealism — Mrs. Eddy Makes a " Revelation " 
of it — The Battle Cry of Christian Science — The 
Question of Reality — Christian Science neither 
Christian nor Scientific — The Practical Objection — 
Difficulties of Apologists — Soul Senses — Mrs. Eddy's 
Isolation — An Unanswerable Criticism — No Room for 
Evolution — A Grave Indictment — Timely Illustrations 
of its Philosophical Anarchy. 

THE philosophy of Christian Science is 
not difficult to state. It is merely a 
distinctive form of idealism. It is, in plain 
words, the theory, almost as old as man, that 
there is no reality save thought. India had 
the general idea before ever Gautama took his 
seat beneath the bo-tree. Democritus of Ab- 
dera as early as 430 B.C. remarked: "Man 
lives plunged in a world of illusion and of 
deceptive forms which the vulgar take for 
reality." Plato aroused a thoughtful interest 
in it among the metaphysical. The Zend- 
Avesta is tinged with idealism. The Neo- 

io8 



The Philosophy 109 

Platonists made much of it in the early Chris- 
tian centuries. 

Bishop Berkeley, without denying the ex- 
ternal world which we know, gave it a new 
vogue two hundred years ago. Spinoza's 
'" Universal Substance " is substantially Mrs. 
Eddy's " Infinite Mind." Kant went so far 
as to lay down the proposition that " the laws 
of nature which physical science studies are 
the creations of our own understanding, acting 
upon the data of the senses." Lotze said that 
" matter is nothing but an appearance for our 
perception." The Transcendentalists were 
wont to speak of " the supremacy of mind over 
matter," and Emerson could on occasion sing: 

" Out of thought's interior sphere 
These wonders rose in upper air." 

But none of them ever dreamed of doing 
what Mrs. Eddy has accomplished in a single 
generation, making the philosophy of idealism 
in the minds of thousands a revelation handed 
down from heaven at a definite time and place, 
and the basis of a new and startling faith. 

The one reality, says Mrs. Eddy, is God, 
whose other name is Mind or Spirit. " God 
is All-in-all." "All is infinite Mind and its 
infinite manifestation." " Matter is unknown 
in the Universe of Mind," *' What seems to 



no Christian Science 

be matter is a mortal, material sense of that 
which is spiritual and perfect." " Matter and 
mortal body are the illusions of human belief 
which seem to appear and disappear to mortal 
sense alone." ^ 

One may agree or disagree with Mrs. Eddy, 
but one can not in this case fail to understand 
her meaning. She means exactly what she 
says, that matter has no real existence. 

Before Mrs. Eddy's day, metaphysical dis- 
cussion of the nature of the universe was re- 
garded as mere theorising. It was academic; 
it smelt of the lamp. It was for the class-room 
and the seminar. It was not brought out into 
the open. 'No one essayed to reduce it to the 
terms of everyday experience. The utmost 
that even Hegel, most inclusive of all meta- 
physical idealists, set the idealist doing was to 
teach the world to understand itself, not to 
reform itself, according to philosophy. 

Not so Mrs. Eddy. She would turn theory 
into practice. She would have her followers 
live up to her philosophy. Though once she 
does advise them to " emerge gently from mat- 
ter into spirit," ^ ordinarily, she would have 
them all behave as though there were no mat- 
ter. Science and Health is one long battle 
cry to go forth in the spirit's might and put 



The Philosophy m 

to rout the things men falsely fancy that they 
see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Mrs. Eddy's 
ardent understudies crack their whips at the 
recalcitrant. Mr. Mosley says : " What God 
sees once he sees for all eternity, and sees as 
perfect as well as perfectly." ^ Mr. Farlow 
bids them to believe that " the demands of 
truth are that we shall at once be all that God 
would have us." ^ And Mrs. Eddy, for the 
encouragement of the faint-hearted who find 
matter a stubborn fact, indissoluble even in the 
crucible of Christian Science, pleads guilty at 
one time or another to having raised the dead, 
" brought out one apple blossom on an apple 
tree in January when the ground was covered 
with snow. And in Lynn demonstrated in 
the floral line some such small things." ^ 

Mrs. Eddy is far-sighted. She sees that 
the differentiate of her philosophy is its im- 
mediate availability in the world-struggle with 
sin and pain. She realises what many of her 
followers do not seem to realise, that it is the 
possible practicability of her idealism which 
enables it to challenge the attention of the 
world. She understands what even some of 
her official spokesmen give evidence of late of 
misapprehending, that to stand the strain of 
criticism, growing every year more trenchant 



112 Christian Science 

the entire philosophy of Christian Science 
must abide by its obvious meaning without 
such quahfication as one finds in Human Life 
for August. 

Make it, hke all other forms of idealism, 
merely speculation, and Christian Science be- 
comes at once much ado about nothing. Re- 
gard it as logomachy and Mrs. Eddy takes her 
place, the only woman, in the long line of the 
bespectacled philosophers who have speculated 
to little purpose on the evolution of human 
thought. Divorce it like its fellow systems 
from daily living, and Christian Science will 
shrivel up to a brief paragraph in the Encyclo- 
pcedia Britannica. 

This is the end, and there is no other, of all 
the tangled threads of Christian Science meta- 
physics which many a critic has endeavoured 
to untangle only to entangle them the more. 
This is the end the reader is to seize and gently 
pull if he would see the tangles disappear and 
the threads all lengthen out to one. 

Then he will clearly apprehend why Chris- 
tian Science is something wholly different in 
its philosophy from historic Christianity, which 

looks out, on the entire sum of facts, in all the 
reality with which they enter into our vital ex- 
periences. It sees the solid earth in its undeniable 



The Philosophy 113 

activity. It sees humanity in its unmistakable 
flesh and blood. It sees a vast physical universe 
spreading away into illimitable regions of space and 
time, moving under inexorable laws, held together 
into a single ordered mass, by the stress of co-ordi- 
nated forces. All this it sees, it accepts. It 
denies nothing, it refuses nothing. Whatever a 
valid experience ratifies, this is, for it, real.^ 

Historic Christianity accepts things as they 
are, and is still as idealistic as Christian Sci- 
ence. Things may have all the objectivity 
they seem to have and yet be forms of thought 
constructed by the mind and needed for the 
mind to work with and to work upon. Things 
may respond to all the tests the senses make 
and still be but expressions of the Universal 
Mind. There is no reason in the nature of the 
case why God, who is all Spirit and all Mind, 
must be limited in His range of choice of spirit 
forms. There is, at any rate, no philosophical 
necessity for finiteness to set metes and bounds 
to Infinitude and presuming upon the posses- 
sion of spiritual senses, decide offhand what 
Infinitude must always do. Hamlet's word 
to Horatio is worthy the consideration also of 
the Christian Scientist: 

" There are more things in heaven and earth, 
Horatio, 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 

8 



ti4 Christian Science 

The reader will apprehend, besides, why 
Christian Science is not really scientific. 
Science has no place for the finality that Mrs. 
Eddy has always claimed for her revelation 
of 1866 but has been disproving all these years 
by the continuous revision ^ of her monu- 
mental book. Science recognises no such 
principle as Mr. Farlow would establish in his 
exhortation to become " at once all that God 
would have us"; for the essence of science is 
the gradual development for which evolution 
stands and which Jesus illustrated in his words, 
" first the blade, then the ear ; after that the 
full corn in the ear." And those who would 
be Christian Scientists and true scientists at 
one and the same time may well regard the 
godly counsel of Sir Oliver Lodge : " if they 
will let go their anchorage, and sail on in a 
spirit of fearless faith, they will find an 
abundant reward, by attaining a deeper in- 
sight into the Divine Nature, and a wider and 
brighter outlook over the destiny of man." ^ 

But what is the objection to Mrs. Eddy's 
theory that the one absolute God, who is 
omnipotence, truth, justice, love, has so con- 
structed us that we see nothing which we think 
we see, that through no fault of our own we 
seem to be involved in a universal lie which 



The Philosophy 115 

Mrs. Eddy has built up a church to dissipate? 
The objection is manifestly this, that while we 
all may have one opinion or another about the 
composition of the universe, while many of us 
may hold with her to some form of ideaHsm, 
while some of us may agree with her that spirit 
and not matter is both original and ultimate 
in the universe, we have each day to act as 
though matter existed. 

For all practical purposes in the action or 
in the hf e of man, matter does exist. Bridge- 
building, house-building, nation-building, 
prove it to be no figment of imagination. We 
may all agree to agree with Mrs. Eddy that 
there is no matter, that matter is an idle dream. 
But our very agreement makes matter cease 
to be a dream. For as Kant long since ob- 
served: "A dream which all dream together, 
and which all must dream, is not a dream but 
a reahty." 

There are signs of late that some of Mrs. 
Eddy's recognised interpreters are uneasy at 
the turn the argument is taking at the hands 
of critics. Mr. Farlow went the length three 
years ago, of admitting that " Christian 
Science includes not only a presentation of the 
true spiritual state which is to be attained, but 
also a wise consideration and disposition of our 



it6 Christian Science 

present erroneous material condition. Call 
them what we please — delusions or realities — 
we find ourselves confronted," he admits, 
" with limitations, discords, and evils — things 
which can not be ignored." ^ Only the other 
day, he was at great pains to explain in reply 
to a sermon preached, April 22, 1907, in 
Indianapolis — for Mr. Farlow's watchful eye 
notes every criticism press and pulpit the land 
over offer his cause — that Christian Science 
" does not deny that pain and sin are real to 
material sense." Another of Mrs. Eddy's of- 
ficial interpreters, Mr. Bicknell Young, goes 
a little farther. He said, October 8, 1906, in 
Springfield, Massachusetts, that Christian 
Scientists in general do not deny the reality of 
things. " They affirm," he says, " the eternal 
existence of all things." 

And so Mrs. Eddy's thesis of the unreality 
of matter would seem to be wounded in the 
house of its friends. But the hurt is only in 
the seeming. Neither means what his words 
imply to those uninitiated in Christian Science 
dialectics. Each seizes on a word which every- 
body understands generically and gives to it 
specialised significance. Each has in mind a 
subtle distinction between reality and actuality 
which people never make in ordinary discourse. 



The Philosophy 117 

Each gives to reality the spiritual meaning 
which is but one of many meanings it may 
have, and when using it of matter thinks of 
matter not as matter is to ordinary minds but 
as it is to Christian Scientists, — spirit and not 
matter. 

To the average man anything is real of which 
his everyday experience gives valid testimony. 
Anything is real to him which cannot be ex- 
plained away, which stays where it is put in 
time or space, which everybody accepts in the 
same sense as anybody. When, therefore, 
Mr. Young and Mr. Farlow begin these days 
to talk of things as though things were real, 
the average man takes notice and begins to 
think he apprehends. But just as apprehen- 
sion, happy and expectant, passes into satis- 
fying comprehension, Mr. Farlow disappears 
in a mist of Mrs. Eddy's making about the 
difference between the senses of the body and 
the senses of the mind, and Mr. Young re- 
solves " things into thoughts " existent only in 
the mind of God. And so, confused, and 
dazed, the uninitiated in Christian Science 
metaphysics are led round by a back way once 
more into Mrs. Eddy's main travelled road of 
the ** unreality of things." 

Now one of two things is irrefutably true: 



liS Christian Science 

either Christian Science spokesmen, in order 
to deceive the unwary and untrained, pur- 
posely argue in a circle, or else they are trying 
to account for themselves in a situation in 
which there are spiritual elements playing 
round them which they do not understand and 
which therefore they cannot make quite clear to 
others. Personally, I would gladly believe the 
latter of them. But I cannot understand why 
through the words and writings of Christian 
Scientists often ring impeachments of the sin- 
cerity, intelligence, and studiousness of those 
outside the fold who want to know the truth, 
whatever it may be, about the faith and its 
founder, and who intend, at whatever cost, 
to have their questions answered or else to 
know the reason why. 

But Mrs. Eddy and her spokesmen hint 
that the real reason why we do not see things 
as they see them as thoughts in the Mind of 
God is that we lack what they have — Soul 
senses. Spirit senses. Mind senses. 

What we term the five physical senses [Mrs. Eddy 
states], are simply beliefs of mortal mind . . . 
the avenues and instruments of human error, which 
correspond with it. . . . Christian Science sus- 
tains, with immortal proof, the impossibility of any 
material sense, and defines these so-called senses as 
mortal beliefs, whose testimony can neither be true 



The Philosophy 119 

of man nor his Maker. . . . Mind alone possesses 
all faculties, perception, and comprehension; there- 
fore mental endowments are not at the mercy of 
organisation and decomposition. Otherwise the very 
worms could unfashion man. If it were possible 
for the real senses of man to be injured, Soul could 
reproduce them in all their perfection; but they 
cannot be disturbed, since they exist as Mind, not 
matter. . . . Neither age nor accident can inter- 
fere with the Soul's senses and there are no other 
real senses.^^ 

Here, at last, one is inclined to make the 
frank admission that Mrs. Eddy has had some- 
thing very like a revelation. But no. Soul 
senses are old friends. Kant knew them. 
Emerson's address on " Nature " in 1838 led 
to their adequate discussion. ^^ Quimby was 
familiar with them ; for in a manuscript the au- 
thor has seen, dated March, 1861, a year and 
a half before Mrs. Eddy paid her first visit to 
Quimby, he speaks of man's true senses as 
" spiritual " and potentially free from the 
body.^^ In the manuscript, also, which Mrs. 
Eddy used at Stoughton and attributed to 
Quimby there is a paragraph about soul 
senses. And so we find Mrs. Eddy once more 
in the wake of P. P. Quimby, learning after 
him, probably from him in one of their many 
talks, another of the essentials to her theory. 



I20 Christian Science 

But what does Mrs. Eddy mean by soul 
senses? She means evidently spiritual intui- 
tions. Why not, then, say so frankly? Why 
invent a new vocabulary when the old is ade- 
quate ? Why not speak plain English like the 
rest of us ? Why write like the young student 
in the theological seminary, who brought to his 
instructor an essay on the Book of Exodus in 
which he said, " In the midst of all this tumult 
the son of Amram stood unmoved " ? " Whom 
do you mean," inquired the instructor, " by the 
son of Amram? " " I mean Moses, sir," was 
the reply. " Well, if you mean Moses why do 
you not say Moses? " 

Is there no one bold enough to point out to 
Mrs. Eddy the absurdity of claiming that the 
race's spiritual intuitions are given to the 
Christian Scientists alone? Is there no one 
brave enough to remind her that four years be- 
fore her book appeared Professor Tyndall was 
showing in his essay on The Scientific Uses of 
the Imagination how helpful insight is to sci- 
ence? Is there no one venturesome enough to 
recall to her memory that ten years before 
twenty-six of her admiring friends invited her 
to start a church in Boston and become its 
preacher, Phillips Brooks began at Trinity 
Church, scarcely more than a stone's throw 



The Philosophy 121 

from Mrs. Eddy's, that prophetic ministry 
which for many years was to the intuitions of 
countless thousands a continuous unveiling of 
the glories that shall be in heaven and earth? 
Is there no one divinely daring enough to teach 
her the comprehensive truth that all men being 
sons of God have the spiritual senses Mrs. 
Eddy talks so much about, and use them not 
to deny that there is such a thing as matter, 
but to transfigure and suffuse and make sacra- 
mental this matter which our spirit taber- 
nacles in until " our flesh being subdued to the 
Spirit, we may ever obey Thy Godly motions 
in righteousness, and true holiness, to thy 
honour and glory who livest and reignest with 
the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, 
world without end? " ^^ 

It is so pathetic. Shut off from that world 
of sense which she vows does not exist, an 
aged woman who has had no superior among 
the women of recent times in the power to im- 
press herself upon the age in which she lives 
treads round and round the narrow circle of 
her vain delusion that things are not, and yet 
for practical purposes they must be for a 
while at least, denying the existence of the com- 
fortable house she lives in and yet is willing to 
live in until she dies, disputing the materiality 



122 Christian Science 

of the coal that keeps her warm even though 
one of her disciples does admit that possibly 
it is real as long as the body it protects from 
the New England blasts seems to be, denying 
that " food is what sustains life " and yet of 
course indulging just as usual in her tea and 
toast and comforting herself with the reflec- 
tion that it would be " foolish to stop eating 
until we gain more goodness," disavowing if 
she is truly logical that the monumental book 
exists, the sale of which at a price prohibitive 
to the poor has lifted her from poverty and 
placed her in the list of millionaires, and yet 
issuing the following instructions to her fol- 
lowers: " It shall be the duty of all Christian 
Scientists to circulate and to sell as many of 
these books [she refers also to her other books] 
as they can. If a member of the First Church 
of Christ, Scientist, shall fail to obey this in- 
junction it will render him liable to lose his 
membership in this church." ^* 

It is more pathetic yet to turn from Mr. 
Farlow's earnest effort to square Christian 
Science with common sense in his admission 
that there are " things which cannot be ig- 
nored," and from Mr. Young's strange dialec- 
tic that Christian Scientists do not " deny the 
reality of things," to Mrs. Eddy's cruel, 



The Philosophy 123 

crushing, and conclusive sentence that " no- 
thing possesses reality or existence except 
God." ^^ Of Mrs. Eddy and her loyal inter- 
preters one is compelled to observe in calm 
and altogether kindly mood that, wholly apart 
from the merits and demerits of the cause they 
represent, " They cannot go on forever stand- 
ing on one leg, or sitting without a chair, or 
walking with their feet tied, or grazing like 
the stags of Tityrus in the air." ^^ They must 
get together and keep together in the public 
mind if they would win the world to Christian 
Science. 

There is one criticism of the philosophy of 
Christian Science to which no answer can be 
given. With the rest of us, Mrs. Eddy agrees 
that God is infinite. Being infinite, God is, 
in the nature of the case, unbounded by the 
Hmitations which time sets to our finiteness. 
God is timeless, and the psalmist therefore 
spoke well within the truth when he remarked 
that " A thousand years in Thy sight are but 
as yesterday." So careless is God of time that 
He takes a summer for the painting of the 
petal of the rose, ten thousand years or more 
to make a ton of coal, and no one knows how 
many million years to make man out of pri- 
mordial protoplasm. 



124 Christian Science 

It would be, perhaps, enough to prove my 
point were I to remind the reader that a revela- 
tion which, like Mrs. Eddy's, purports to cover 
every human interest, leaves no room for the 
thought of evolution. But I would take no 
advantage. I turn rather to the efforts made 
in recent years to explain away Mrs. Eddy's 
earlier claims for both originality and finality 
in the revelation she received. One instance 
is adequately illustrative. Mr. Farlow inci- 
dently admits, even in the face of Mrs. Eddy's 
frequent hints that between her and Christ 
there has been no historic link, that possibly 
there have been sages before the sage of Pleas- 
ant View, and that while Christian Science is 
" the direct emanation of the Divine intelli- 
gence as opposed to mere belief, yet its advent 
has been the result of development." ^^ But 
set no store by such admissions. Mr. Farlow 
follows Mrs. Eddy all the way even when his 
words would sometimes seem to lead another 
way. And to know the attitude of Christian 
Science toward evolution we must turn to Mrs. 
Eddy before we listen to her representatives. 

Mrs. Eddy does say: 

Perfection is seen and acknowledged only by de- 
grees, in the midst of imperfection. The ages must 
slowly work up to it. How long it must be before 



The Philosophy 125 

we arrive at the demonstration of Scientific Being, 
no man knoweth, — not even the Son, but the 
Father ; but one thing is certain, that error will con- 
tinue its delusions until the final goal of gladness is 
assiduously earned and won.^^ 

This looks like evolution, but it is not evolu- 
tion. The process to which she refers is in- 
tellectual, not cosmic. It is nothing but a rather 
turgid statement that it will take a while to 
convert all the world to Christian Science, — 
an obvious truth. 

At a time when modification of the views of 
Darwin and Weismann has not weakened but 
rather strengthened the fundamental concept 
of evolution, Mrs. Eddy goes merrily along 
her way disclosing in such words as these her 
ignorance of the very alphabet of evolution: 
" Theorising about man's development from 
mushrooms to monkeys and from monkeys to 
men, amounts to nothing in the right direction, 
and very much in the wrong." ^^ 

It would not be fair, however, to leave this 
aspect of our theme without an effort to find 
in Mrs. Eddy's entourage some who know 
more than she concerning evolution. Mr. Joel 
Rufus Mosley is a young man. He has had 
in Chicago, Harvard, and Heidelberg train- 
ing in philosophy. He writes with charm and 



1 



126 Christian Science 

clearness, and his writings are gladly read. 
He tells us, in The Cosmopolitan for July, 
1907, that 

Christian Science reveals that, since God is above 
the finite sense of time and space and all limitations 
of ignorance and evil, since he is unchanging in his 
perfection of being, action, and thought, whatever 
he sees once, he sees forever. The universe, includ- 
ing man, is, therefore, always perfect in the mind of 
God ; as God made it, sustains it, sees it, as it really 
exists. 

This means, if it means anything, that there 
is in the Christian Science scheme, no place for 
the evolution of the universe. Others, but not 
Christian Scientists, may therefore sing: 

" A fire mist and a planet, a crystal and a cell ; 
A jellyfish and saurian, and caves where the cave 

men dwell, 
Then a sense of law and beauty, and a face turned 

from the clod; 
Some call it evolution, and others call it God.'^ 

But Christian Science has its mathematician 
as well as its philosopher. The First Reader 
of the Church at Concord, Professor Herman 
S. Hering, was once a member of the mathe- 
matical staff of the Johns Hopkins University. 
He, therefore, should have working know- 
ledge of the theory of evolution, and he says: 



The Philosophy 127 

It is claimed by some opponents that because 
Christian Scientists do not walk on the water, turn 
water into wine, multiply loaves and fishes, as did 
Jesus, and because they still have to do with matter 
at every turn, the doctrines of Christian Science, 
especially that of the unreality of matter, must be 
fallacious. Such an argument is like that which 
declares that because a schoolboy, who is just learn- 
ing to add and subtract, cannot work out a problem 
in cube root, therefore the claims of greater pos- 
sibilities in the science of mathematics are falla- 
cious, and the schoolboy is badly deceived by the 
promise of being able eventually to solve such 
higher problems.^o 

These words, too, mean what they seem to 
mean, that evolution is not of matter but 
merely in the mind of those who are develop- 
ing into consciousness of the unreality of mat- 
ter. He says, too, as clearly as analogy can 
speak, that the time is coming when Christian 
Scientists will be able to whistle matter down 
the wind of life. It is all of a piece with Mr. 
Farlow's charge that we "at once be all that 
God would have us." 

Denying, then, that God does follow the 
time-method of evolution in His work, insist- 
ing that because a thing is true it must neglect 
all time conditions except perhaps a few brief 
centuries. Christian Science sets itself against 
the biggest truth that man has ever learned 



128 Christian Science 

about God's way of working. All these ages 
past, since Anaxagoras was trying to pluck 
out the secret of eclipses, and Job on his ash- 
heap was justifying to himself the ways of God 
to man, men have meditated on the problems 
of the universe, assuming at the outset that 
however God may work. He must have all the 
time He wants to do His work. 

As in these latter days men have come to 
see that God's method is invariably that of evo- 
lution and that therefore He takes more time 
than men once thought necessary for Him to 
do his work, men have developed such a respect 
for God's intelligence as in their ignorance 
they never had before. More than this, as 
normal men look back across the ages and see 
how slowly man has moved upward, working 
out the beast, and how quickly he has some- 
times fallen back into his native beastliness, 
they grow righteously impatient with a scheme 
of human conduct which not only bids man act 
as if there were no past but also encourages 
him to ignore the plain dictates of that ordi- 
nary common sense to which society (as 
Christian Science will one day find to its dis- 
comfiture) sometimes owes more than to that 
mysterious second sight of which Mrs. Eddy 
speaks. 



.1 






The Philosophy 129 

Mrs. Eddy may conceivably be right, the 
rest of us wrong; but it will take more than 
her " final revelation " of 1866 to induce repre- 
sentative men like Roosevelt and Taft, Eliot 
and Woodrow Wilson, Rainsf ord and George 
Gordon, to part with the accumulated know- 
ledge of the past and to act as though the only 
things worth while had been revealed through 
the ambiguous pages of Science and Health. 
^Vhat Ancrum says to David Grieve, after his 
return from the far country, of defiance of 
conventions, can as well be said to-day to 
those who without a critical study of its philo- 
sophy build their house upon the sand of 
Christian Science: 

All these centuries the human animal has fought 
with the human soul. And step by step the 
soul has registered her victories. She has won 
them only by feeling for the law and finding it- 
uncovering, bringing into light, the firm rocks be- 
neath her feet. And on these rocks she rears her 
landmarks — marriage, the family, the State, the 
Church. Neglect them, and you sink into the 
quagmire from which the soul of the race has been 
for generations struggling to save you. Dispute 
them! overthrow them, — ^yes, if you can! You have 
about as much chance with them as you have with 
the other facts and laws amid which you live — 
physical or chemical or biological.21 



I30 Christian Science 

Along the way of evolution then, I draw to 
my indictment of Christian Science as a sys- 
tem of philosophy. I charge it with being 
nothing less than philosophical anarchy con- 
cealed beneath confusedness of thought and 
ambiguity of words. I charge it with pro- 
posing to the world a strange theory of life 
which, if lived up to, would break with the past 
in thought and action, disintegrate institutions 
built up at cost incredible of life and limb, and 
substitute for the order that has been secured 
in government, industry, morals, and religion, 
a state in which every man would do what 
seemed right in his own sight, wilfully regard- 
less of the world experience, and what we have 
gained in ages past would, therefore, all be 
Iost.22 

Is my indictment too severe? Think 
clearly. If Mrs. Eddy's theory that there is 
no matter in the universe is of more signifi- 
cance than any other idealistic theory it is be- 
cause she would make haste to turn it into 
practice. Let us in fancy in a few imaginable 
instances act upon her theory: 

Coming up the street a moment since, I 
passed the police station. A useless burden 
on the city ! Since there is nothing in the uni- 
verse but God and God is good, there is no 



The Philosophy 1 3 1 

criminal in jail or out. Or if there seems to 
be, the criminal is labouring under a delusion. 
" Through silent argument, convince the 
mortal of his mistake." ^^ That is Mrs. Eddy's 
way, if she is logical. 

A block nearer I passed a drug store, whose 
contents Mrs. Eddy characterises as substi- 
tutes for the dignity and potency of divine 
mind, having for their purpose to " give 
death and the grave victory over man." ^^ 
She brushes them away with the few words, 
" Mortal mind confers the only power a drug 
can ever possess," ^^ and casually suggests that 
her third husband was killed by " arsenical 
poisoning mentally administered." ^^ For the 
doctors she has sharper words than for the 
druggists. " Diplomas," she reminds them, 
" no more confer a rightful power to kill peo- 
ple than does the assassin's steel." ^^ " Why 
support the popular systems of medicine," she 
inquires, " when the physician may be per- 
chance an infidel, and lose ninety-and-nine 
patients while Christian Science cures its 
hundred? " ^^ As though this were not enough, 
she adds that it is the doctors who " are flood- 
ing the world with diseases, because they are 
ignorant that the human mind and body are 
one." If this does not mean what it seems 



132 Christian Science 

to mean what does it mean? And how can 
Miss Brookins say " Christian Scientists have 
no quarrel with the medical profession? " ^^ 

A little nearer home I passed the Edwards 
Church, representing three centuries and more 
of struggle for the right to worship God as the 
individual pleases. Mrs. Eddy's writing is de- 
ficient in the saving grace of humour. But 
that she can indulge in irony is evident in these 
words about the churches and the clergy: 
" One of the forms of worship in Thibet is to 
carry a praying machine through the streets, 
and stop at the doors to earn a penny by grind- 
ing out a prayer; whereas civilisation pays for 
prayers by the clergy in lofty edifices. Is 
the difference very great after all? " ^^ Of all 
for which the Edwards Church stands, she can 
think of nothing more to say than " Worship- 
ping through the medium of matter is Pagan- 
ism." ^^ " As in Jesus' days, tyranny and 
pride need to be whipped out of the temple, 
and humility and divine science welcomed 
in." ^^ This is the personal contribution of 
Mrs. Eddy to Christian unity. 

And as to Smith College on my left, that is, 
according to Mrs. Eddy's theory, an evident 
absurdity. As we shall see later, sin and suf- 
fering are to Christian Scientists the special 



The Philosophy 133 

delusions that spring out of the great delusion 
that matter exists. If sin and suffering are 
delusions, history and literature, which are sat- 
urated with men's sins and sufferings, are de- 
luding. What we call the sciences, too, we 
may neglect as " built on the false hypotheses 
that matter is its own lawgiver, that law is 
founded on material conditions." ^^ Yet the 
very buildings of Smith College are a proof 
made possible by that form of matter we call 
money that matter as well as spirit is, that 
God does work sacramentally, does reveal 
Himself to us through other books beside those 
of Mrs. Eddy, that in spite of Mrs. Eddy's 
dictum that "human thought never projected 
the least portion of true science," ^^ human 
thought is projecting every week in the labora- 
tories of Smith College not Christian Science 
but true science. Mrs. Eddy would not tear 
the buildings down; there are, of course, ac- 
cording to her theory, no buildings to tear 
down. She suggests that to Christian Science 
be given the place in the curriculum which is 
now occupied by what she inaccurately calls 
" scholastic theology and physiology." ^^ But 
she can scarcely hope that her suggestion will 
be promptly followed. 

Now I submit in all sincerity that if this 



134 Christian Science 

is not in essence anarchy, then there is no word 
in the Enghsh language with which to de- 
scribe it. 

If the reply is made that Mrs. Eddy would 
not apply her theory at once in every instance, 
that she has in late years advised her followers 
to obey the laws concerning contagious dis- 
eases, to leave surgery for a while to the doc- 
tors, to refrain from antagonism of the 
churches, and to send their children to school; 
that in nowise breaks the force of my conten- 
tion. Whatever time allowance Mrs. Eddy 
permits is in direct contradiction of her thesis 
that there is no matter and that we err every 
time we act as though matter existed. If Mrs. 
Eddy were inclined to give to God all the time 
He needs and takes to work by the law of evo- 
lution which we see everywhere in operation, 
then Christian Science would simply be an in- 
teresting speculation bearing in no way on 
our every-day existence, in no way disturbing 
our relationship to church or to society, and 
scarcely worth expression in a new sect whose 
ultimate effect will be still further to postpone 
the happy day when we shall be " all of one 
heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond 
of truth and peace, of faith and charity." 



»> 36 



CHAPTER VI 

THE RELIGION AND THEOLOGY 

God All-in-all — Principle not Personality — From Panthe- 
ism into Dualism — The Trinity — Christian Science is 
the Holy Spirit — The Incarnation an Exaggerated 
Nestorianism — Deifying Mrs. Eddy — Prayer Declara- 
tion not Petition — Abandoning the Sacraments — 
Substitution of a Breakfast for the Lord's Supper — 
Evil no Real Existence — The Absurd Obsession of 
Animal Magnetism. 

T^HE religion of Christian Science flows 
^ out of its philosophy. Lest I seem to 
have an eye more for faults than virtues, let 
me once again admit the merits of the system. 
Christian Science is in spite of every weakness 
a stout protest against materialism. It is, as 
Mr. Farnsworth truly says, " a religio-philo- 
sophical system appearing amidst an unphilo- 
sophical people of materialistic tendencies." 
To the philosophical materialism of those who, 
forgetting that there may be transmissive as 
well as productive functions, would make 
thought nothing but a function of the brain. 
Christian Science presents a vigorous if some- 

135 



136 Christian Science 

what incoherent denial. To the practical ma- 
terialism that would leave God out of all 
account except on Sundays, Christian Science, 
though often strangely inconsistent, does 
steadily reply that " God is All-in-all " on 
week days as on Sunday. Christian Science 
does save many from their lower self. It does 
lead many to a larger faith in God and a closer 
walk with Him. It does impart to many a 
power and poise, serenity and joy they might 
have found before if they had sought them dih- 
gently in the church of their upbringing. 

But as a religion — and, like Mrs. Eddy, we 
must use the term religion loosely to include 
theology — Christian Science has defects as 
fundamental as we found a while ago in its 
philosophy, and the first of these appears in 
the consideration of the Christian Science God. 

Unity is the mind's first quest, and Mrs. 
Eddy is in line with other pilgrims of the In- 
finite in seeking unity. Unlike many of those, 
however, she has found what she has sought 
and has given it a name. " Principle " she 
calls it, and thus she answers the inquiry, " Is 
there more than one Principle?" "There is 
not. Principle is Divine, one Life, one Truth, 
one Love." ^ " Principle " is Mrs. Eddy's God 
and she has many synonyms for it : " God," 



The Religion and Theology 137 

"Mind," "Spirit," "Soul," "Substance," 
" Life," " Truth," " Love." 

" Principle " in her theology gathers up into 
itself all the concepts we habitually associate 
with God, except the most important — per- 
sonality. Before her book appeared in 1875, 
she was telling her pupils, as two of them in- 
form me, that they could make no progress till 
they had banished from their minds the thought 
of God as person. She instructed Richard 
Kennedy " to lay special stress," in healing 
patients, on the impersonality of God. This 
is the commanding thought that rings through 
the first chapter of the first edition of Science 
and Healthj and in the third edition (1881) she 
writes with confident assurance that God " is 
not a person, God is Principle." ^ In subse- 
quent editions, while the word " person " oc- 
curs more frequently, it is on " Principle " that 
she chiefly depends. In No and Yes she says 
that " God is Love ; and Love is Principle, 
not person." In Christian Science versus 
Pantheism^ she draws such a sharp distinction 
between principle and personality as practi- 
cally to eliminate personality from her idea of 
God. And Mr. Bicknell Young admits out- 
right that " ' personal ' is one of the words that 
has hindered." ^ 



13B Christian Science 

In the interest of clear classification Mrs. 
Eddy finds a place among the idealistic pan- 
theists. But she does not feel at home in such 
companionship. She thinks the prefix pan is 
too suggestive of the " mythological deity of 
that name." ^ She says that pantheism is an- 
nulled by Christian Science. And yet, when 
called upon to condense her system into an 
epigram she puts it thus, " God is All in all "; 
and then allows the sentence to be thus re- 
versed. All in all is God.^ If this surprising 
proposition differs fundamentally from the 
test sentence of all pantheism, " God is all and 
all is God," common sense will be slow in mak- 
ing the discovery. 

Mrs. Eddy explains in some detail that 
" God is not in the things He hath made." ^ 
But her explanation is not so anti-pantheistic 
as it seems. She is ever telling us that there 
are no things for God to be in. What seem 
to be such things are really His thoughts. 
" God is the all-inclusive One, Who with His 
thoughts, ideas, shadows, constitutes the Uni- 
verse." ^ Even man has not the volition and 
the self-activity he thinks he possesses. He 
must will as God wills and act as God acts. 
He is nothing more than God's reflection in the 
looking-glass of Christian Science. When 



The Religion and Theology 139 

he dares to think that he is more, he falls below 
the threshold of manhood and becomes what 
Mrs. Eddy calls with bated breath mere " mor- 
tal mind." 

Try as she will, Mrs. Eddy never quite 
escapes from pantheism except to stumble 
into dualism by the creation of the indepen- 
dent activity of " mortal mind," which has no 
place in God because it is not good. Strange 
to say, Mrs. Eddy's philosopher-apologist, 
ISIr. Mosley, takes the plunge along with her 
out of pantheism into dualism and pictures 
" the Immortal Mind and its universe of pure, 
perfect, and immortal ideas and the mortal 
mind and its seeming world of imperfections " 
as in direct opposition to each other. ^ 

Mrs. Eddy's pantheism is unnecessary, and 
yet its origin was inevitable in a mind as hteral 
as hers. Quimby often spoke of God as prin- 
ciple. In the Quimby manuscript from which 
for several years Mrs. Eddy taught, no sen- 
tence is more startling than the sentence " God 
is Principle." With her passion for the novel 
and bizarre Mrs. Eddy gave to the one new 
thought concerning God which she learned 
from Quimby an importance which it never 
had perhaps in Quimby's large and compre- 
hensive mind. She made it central and cen- 



140 Christian Science 

tripetal in her theology. She exploited it to 
the utmost without perceiving until recent 
years the plight in which it places her theology. 

Once, in 1898, Mrs. Eddy hints that God 
may be personal " if the term personality, as 
applied to God, means infinite 'personality'' 
and Mr. Farlow in 1907 assures the Rev. 
Edgar P. Hill that Mrs. Eddy does believe 
that " God is person in the infinite sense." ^ 

But our difficulties multiply. For more 
than thirty years Mrs. Eddy has been solemnly 
asserting that in 1866 she received a ^'^ final ^^ 
revelation." Now this "final revelation," 
which was finally as well as first expressed in 
1875, in Science and Healthy is saturated with 
the thought that God is not a person. In the 
very first chapter we are informed that " God 
is Principle, not person," that Jesus preached 
the impersonality of God, that it was the error 
of believing in the personality of God that 
crucified Jesus, that the trouble with conven- 
tional Christianity to-day is that it makes God 
a person and that because it " starts from per- 
son, instead of Principle, it is not the truth," 
and that our duty in the premises is to base 
our opinions on principle and not person. 

But if God was " not person " in 1875 He 
is " not person " now. Mrs. Eddy can not 



The Religion and Theology 141 

make God person now without revision of her 
"final revelation'" and a final revelation re- 
vised is no final revelation. Can it be that 
Mrs. Eddy's understudies are engaged in the 
revision of the revelation she received in 1866? 
These words from the earnest pen of Mr. Mat- 
tox would seem to point that way : " Natu- 
rally, with the progress of information and the 
development of her understanding, she might 
be expected to amend or modify her views." ^^ 
Why "naturally"? If Science and Health 
is to be so amended year by year as to contra- 
dict one year what it said in earlier years, then 
it will take its place among the books of 
mortal mind whose value is determined by in- 
trinsic worth and not by "final revelation." 

If Mrs. Eddy believes in 1907 that which in 
1875 she denied, that God is person in any 
sense whatever, the way to make clear her 
change of heart is not by reading into princi- 
ple, which she usually introduces with a capi- 
tal letter, the self-conscious content of per- 
sonality, which she seldom or never intro- 
duces with a capital, but by rewriting the 
text-book of Christian Science in the interest 
of personaHty. She must stop speaking of 
" Principle alone " ^^ as reforming the sinner 
and healing the sick. She must allow some 



142 Christian Science 

place for pleading as well as declaration in 
Christian Science prayer. She must cease to 
picture Christ as a bare idea in the Man of 
Galilee ; ^^ and she must altogether revise this 
crude conception which she offers of the Trin- 
ity : " Life, Truth, and Love constitute the 
triune person called God, — that is, the triply 
divine Principle, Love. They represent a 
trinity in unity, three in one, — the same in es- 
sence, though multiform in office: God the 
Father; Christ the spiritual idea of sonship; 
divine Science, or the Holy Comforter. These 
three express in divine Science the threefold, 
essential nature of the infinite. They also in- 
dicate the divine Principle of scientific being, 
the intelligent relation of God to man and the 
universe." ^^ 

Mrs. Eddy has made many claims for Chris- 
tian Science, but this, that Christian Science is 
the Holy Spirit, overtops them all. It puts 
too heavy a strain upon credulity. And Dr. 
Fluno does not lighten the strain for ordinary 
Christians, wont to think that according to 
promise Jesus sent the Comforter to His be- 
reaved disciples, by making what must seem 
to many the irreverent suggestion that " a 
woman . . . brought it to the world." ^^ 

Concerning the Incarnation, Mrs. Eddy 



The Religion and Theology 143 

thinks more loosely than usual. The early 
Church was ever trying to determine how 
Jesus could be at the same time God and man. 
The necessity to exclude dualism from all 
thought about the personality of Jesus, and to 
establish for all time his oneness, was keenly 
felt. The early councils at Nicsea, Constanti- 
nople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon were called 
for the consideration and determination of one 
aspect or another of this question. But of 
these and of their significance Mrs. Eddy ap- 
parently has no knowledge. As though the 
Council of Ephesus had not met in 431, she 
flings the Christian Science banner to the 
breeze of an exaggerated Nestorianism. She 
writes, " Jesus is the human man and Christ 
is the divine, hence the duality of Jesus, the 
Christ." ^' 

Whence did she get this heresy? Was it a 
feature of the " final revelation " she received 
in 1866? Evidently she would have us so be- 
lieve. Christian Science as a whole dates, she 
says, from that experience. But before we 
put the subject out of mind, we turn back again 
to Quimby and his views. 

What was Quimby's idea of Jesus Christ? 
The Quimby manuscript from which for many 
years Mrs. Eddy taught is not so clear about 



144 Christian Science 

the Incarnation as concerning God. It yields, 
however, these two striking sentences : " Jesus 
was the name of a man and Christ was the 
truth." " Christ was the Wisdom that knew 
Truth dwelt not in opinion." But, fortu- 
nately, there are other Quimby sources. In 
the first volume of the Quimby manuscripts, 
dated April, 1860, two and a half years be- 
fore Mrs. Eddy's first visit to her healer- 
teacher, I found the idea first mentioned. A 
year later, in 1861, Quimby wrote that Jesus 
" separated himself as Jesus the man of opin- 
ions from Christ the scientific man." Again, 
in an article on the senses, he inquires : " Are 
our senses mind? I answer, No. . . . Mind 
and senses are as distinct as light and dark- 
ness, and the same distinction holds good in 
wisdom and knowledge, Jesus and Christ. 
Christ, wisdom, and (spiritual) senses are 
synonymous. So likewise are Jesus, know- 
ledge, and mind." ^^ 

Here is Mrs. Eddy's dualistic conception of 
the Incarnation presented as clearly as she her- 
self has ever stated it. The question, there- 
fore, instantly arises, is this a case of literary 
parallelism? Parallelisms are not uncom- 
mon. They occur, however, so often between 
Mrs. Eddy and Quimby that the reader is by 



The Religion and Theology 145 

this time perhaps as sensitive to them as is the 
present writer. Instinctively, with each suc- 
cessive stage of the unfolding of Mrs. Eddy's 
theology, he looks for another parallelism, and 
he seldom looks in vain. The Mrs. Eddy of 
1862, who in other instances contradicts the 
Mrs. Eddy of 1907, once more resolves our 
difficulty. In the very letter to the Portland 
Courier in which she hints that it is the Christ 
in Dr. Quimby which enables him to heal, she 
refers to " P. P. Quimby's theory of Christ 
(not Jesus) " ^^ and proves conclusively that 
she understands it by professing the willing- 
ness and ability to furnish additional informa- 
tion on the subject. And so once more her 
Pauline claim that " I neither received it of 
man, neither was I taught it, but by the revela- 
tion of Jesus Christ," fades out before a fact.^^ 
Mrs. Eddy is not unmindful of the prob- 
lems raised by her dualistic theory, derived 
from Quimby. She justifies it thus: "The 
divine origin of Jesus gave him more than hu- 
man power." ^^ At the same time she reminds 
us that Jesus was not one with the Father, 
that " the Lamb slain from the foundation of 
the world " was slain only in man's mind, not 
God's, and she finally disposes of the question 
in these easy words : " This dual personality, 



146 Christian Science 

of the unseen and the seen, the spiritual and 
material, the Christ and Jesus, continued un- 
til the Master's ascension; when the human, 
the corporeal concept or Jesus disappeared; 
while his invisible self, or Christ, continued to 
exist in the eternal order of Divine Science." ^^ 
Mrs. Eddy's followers, however, see no 
problems. They see only her solution of them. 
They go along the course of Christian Science, 
belated Nestorians, holding to a dualism dis- 
carded by the Christian Church fifteen hun- 
dred years ago. Before me as I write there 
lie in manuscript the lecture notes of a Chris- 
tian Science teacher of some fifteen years ago 
in which I find these unexpected words: 
" Jesus of Nazareth is often mistaken for the 
real Christ." Coming one Sunday morning 
from a service in the mother Church in Boston, 
I picked up on the street a stray leaf from an 
unknown student's Quarterly ^ and on the mar- 
gin opposite the lesson for February 24th I 
found this pencilled comment: "Jesus, the 
human man; Christ, God's spiritual idea." 
The prophet and the people are one in this as 
in all other things in Christian Science, and 
when they speak of Christ they speak in the 
light of the following amazing sentence which 
Mrs. Eddy gives them: " The true Logos is 
demonstrably Christian Science." 



The Religion and Theology 147 

With the personality of Jesus Christ divided 
into a mere man called Jesus, who was not 
always ^^dse and never had as high a revelation 
as Mrs. Eddy's, and a mere idea called Christ, 
who reappears to-day in Christian Science 
and no other faith, Mrs. Eddy shows a 
certain famiharity in dealing with the In- 
carnation which is disquieting even to the 
unconventional. 

She begins with the assertion that she was 
not " apart from God " in writing her text- 
book. She calls it — and not the Bible — 
" God's Book." She has on more than one 
occasion given the impression by a word or 
deed that she is in some mysterious way un- 
like the rest of us in kind as well as in de- 
gree. She once claims " divine origin." 
Those who are closest to her appear in- 
stinctively to take their cue from her. As 
early as 1882 the little band of Christian Scien- 
tists at Lynn were declaring that " unless we 
hear Her voice we do not hear His voice," and 
the Christian Science Sentinel j reporting Mrs. 
Eddy's address at the annual meeting of the 
mother Church in 1899, says, " it was not then 
Mrs. Eddy whom the people heard, but . . . 
the voice of God." '^ 

No later than last December its editor, 
Mr. Archibald McLellan, sent to her with a 



14S Christian Science 

suggestive note the following quotation from 
Fiona MacLeod's The Isle of Dreams: 

It is commonly said that, if he could be heard, 
none should write in advance of his times. That I 
do not believe. Only, it does not matter how few 
listen, I believe that we are close upon a great and 
deep spiritual change. I believe a new redemption 
is even now conceived of the Divine Spirit in the 
human heart, that is itself as a woman, broken in 
dreams and yet sustained in faith, patient, long- 
suffering, looking towards home. I believe that 
though the Reign of Peace may be yet a long way 
off, it is drawing near, and that Who shall save 
us anew shall come divinely as a Woman, to save 
us as Christ saved but not as He did, to bring 
with her a sword. But whether this Divine woman, 
this Mary of so many passionate hopes and dreams, 
is to come through mortal birth, or as an immortal 
Breathing upon our souls, none can yet know.^s 

Years ago Mrs. Eddy was identifying her- 
self with the " woman clothed with the sun " 
in the book of Revelation, and remarking that 
as Jesus represents " the fatherhood of God " 
so the woman is the " type of God's mother- 
hood." ^^ To Mr. Spofford she had already 
written that her revelation of God was 
" higher, clearer, and more permanent " than 
the Master's had been. In 1898 she passes on 
to this subtle explanation: 



The Religion and Theology 149 

^^ The impersonation of the Spiritual idea had a 
brief history in the earthly life of our Master; but 
of his kingdom there shall be no end; for Christ, 
God's idea, will eventually rule all nations and 
peoples — imperatively, absolutely, finally — with Di- 
vine Science. This immaculate idea, represented 
first by man and last hy woman, will baptize with 
fire." 25 

While she has never said outright, perhaps, 
as has been claimed for her, that she is "the 
Way to God " and Jesus only " the Way- 
shower," ^^ Mrs. Eddy is over-fond of build- 
ing up progressive series like the following: 
" John the Baptist, Jesus the Messiah, the 
Woman " type of God's motherhood." She 
is past-mistress in that art of irresponsible 
allusiveness which Newman had in mind in 
his description of the man " who never enun- 
ciates a truth without guarding himself against 
being supposed to exclude its contradictory." 
What could be more irresponsibly allusive 
than this? — " No person can take the individ- 
ual place of the Virgin Mary. No person can 
compass or fulfill the individual mission of 
Jesus of Nazareth. No person can take the 
place of the author of Science and Health, the 
discoverer and founder of Christian Science. 
Each individual must fill his own niche in time 
and eternity." ^^ 



iSo Christian Science 

What Mrs. Eddy's niche in time is to be, she 
says, " remains to be proved." She is more 
concerned, it seems, to carve out the niche she 
is to fill in all eternity, which, as she realises, 
includes time. She is making rapid progress 
in her ambitious task. She reports in 1906 
that God is " divine Principle — as Life, repre- 
sented by the Father; as Truth, represented 
by the Son; as Love, represented by the 
Mother." '' 

Discovering long ago that Mrs. Eddy 
likes to dwell upon the incarnation of the 
motherhood of God, that she had even sug- 
gested the idea in her version of the Lord's 
Prayer with its appalling substitution of " Our 
Father-Mother God " for " Our Father which 
art in heaven," Mrs. Eddy's followers began 
with one accord to call her " Mother." To 
hold the vantage ground thus gained in her 
progressive elevation, Mrs. Eddy, in the 
nineties, designated herself as " Mother 
Mary " and made it in a by-law of the mother 
Church " an indication of disrespect for their 
Pastor Emeritus, and unfitness to be a mem- 
ber of the Mother Church," for Christian 
Scientists to give the title Mother to anybody 
else on earth except one's mother in the flesh. 
Everybody spoke of her as " Mother." She 



The Religion and Theology 151 

sometimes signed herself " Mother Mary." 
The President of the National Christian Sci- 
ence Association on one occasion said, " There 
is but one Moses, one Jesus; and there is but 
one Mary." ^9 

All this deifying went on not without some 
criticism even in the Christian Science camp. 
Mrs. Eddy, therefore, always watchful for 
any sign of disaffection, made at last one of 
her sweeping denials, as though facts could be 
denied, and added a new by-law in 1903 to her 
church Manual ordering the substitution of 
the word Leader for Mother in Christian Sci- 
ence terminology. ^^ Mark Twain's quaint 
suggestion that there would never have been 
any trouble had Mrs. Eddy signed her famous 
telegram " Mother Baker " and not " Mother 
Mary " lights up the entire situation.^^ Mrs. 
Eddy did not want, and can not bear, to be re- 
garded as an ordinary mother of her spiritual 
children. She craves, and she will have, a 
higher type of motherhood. 

Under pressure, Mrs. Eddy has now and 
then repudiated the parallelism her words have 
constantly been tending to set up between her- 
self and Christ. But here, again, facts are 
not to be dismissed by mere denial. They are 
too numerous and too indicative to be denied. 



152 Christian Science 

Even in her early teaching days she fell in- 
stinctively into comparisons of herself and 
Jesus, and never to her own disparagement. 

This is what she wrote in 1877 to a favourite 
student : 

I know the crucifiction of the one who presents 
Truth in its higher aspect will be this time through 
a bigger error, through mortal mind instead of its 
lower strata or matter, showing that the idea given 
of God this time is higher, clearer, and more per- 
manent than before. My dear companion and fel- 
low labourer in the Lord is grappling stronger than 
did Peter with the enemy, he would cut off their 
hands and ears; you dear student, are doubtless 
praying for me — and so the Modern Lawgiver is 
upheld for a time.^^ 

If anything was needed to complete the 
parallehsm between herself and Jesus it was 
furnished in the amusing comparison of her 
un-Petrine husband with the impetuous dis- 
ciple who cut off the ear of Malchus when 

" Out of the woods my Master came/' 

Mrs. Eddy loved, also, to play the role of 
the suffering Messiah, as though a system 
which has no room for suffering could need a 
suffering Messiah, and when she was ill or 
troubled, as frequently occurred, she was apt 
to remind her students that Jesus, too, was 



The Religion and Theology 153 



bruised for our transgressions and bore upon 
his shoulders the world pain.^^ 

In 1899 the Christian Science Journal, 
which she then owned, distinctly made the 
claim, without rebuke from her, that Mrs. 
Eddy was the equal of Jesus, and offered elab- 
orate proofs in confirmation of the same.^^ 
She has always had a liking for the words 
of Jesus in discussing her own personality, 
and she cannot, even in 1906, attempt the solu- 
tion of the vexatious servant problem by mak- 
ing it obligatory on any Scientist designated 
by the Board to become her servant without 
adding, in the by-laws of her church, the re- 
minder that " He that loveth father or mother 
more than me is not worthy of me." ^^ 

In an illustrated book called Christ and 
Christmas J, published by her in 1894, her 
parallelisms reach the climax of audacity. 
One picture represents Christ with a halo round 
his head raising the dead from a modern cof- 
fin. Another represents a woman with a halo 
round her head raising the sick from a bed. 
In a third picture the two are brought to- 
gether, and there is a halo round each head. 
Jesus, seated on a stone, holds the woman's 
right hand while in her left she bears a scroll 
on which the words " Christian Science " ap- 



154 Christian Science 

pear. The identity of the woman is not stated. 
Why should it be? The very arrangement 
of the hair suggests it. The following limp 
verse opposite the picture leaves nothing 
to imagination: 

"As in Blessed Palestine's hour, so in our age 
'T is the same hand unfolds His power and writes 
the page." 

If the picture is not self -authenticating then 
the mystic words she wrote, when the usual 
criticism came, that " Scientists sometimes 
take things too seriously," ^^ and her with- 
drawal of the book from circulation until the 
storm was over, will suffice to convince every- 
body except those who can not be convinced. 
But specific instances are not needed to in- 
form the conscientious student of Christian 
Science literature that Mrs. Eddy holds her- 
self in an unmatched relationship to Jesus 
Christ. The entire sweep of her teaching, the 
attitude toward her into which her followers 
intuitively drift, the progressive mariolatry 
steadily developing in spite of her transparent 
protests, and the painstaking efforts made till 
recently to conceal the infirmities of her ad- 
vancing years, are sufficiently indicative. 
And if in spite of all appearances, as one near 
her has said, there is no warrant for the in- 



The Religion and Theology 155 

evitable conclusion, the verdict, however well 
disposed the critic is, will be not unlike the 
homely verdict of the Western jury," " Not 
guilty, but don't do it again." 

Whatever may be Mrs. Eddy's relationship 
to Jesus Christ, there is one respect in which 
she seems to set herself above Him. Jesus 
prayed as normal people pray. He prayed to 
God as though God were a person. He prayed 
to God as though God were His Father. 
He pleaded with Him for specific things, con- 
ditioning each prayer with its "if it be possi- 
ble." He prayed in private and He prayed 
in public ; and He taught His disciples a form 
of common prayer, the justification and illus- 
tration of all common prayer to-day. Mrs. 
Eddy accepts the fundamental principle of all 
Jesus' praying, that prayer is communion with 
God. But her acceptance is modified by the 
persistence and obtrusiveness of her pantheism. 

How can one pray to God when one is not 
sure that God is personal? How can one 
pray to God when one believes that " prayer 
addressed to a person prevents our letting go 
of personality for the impersonal Spirit to 
whom all things are possible "?^^ How can 
one pray to God when one holds that " the 
habit of pleading with the divine Mind, as one 



156 Christian Science 

pleads with a human being, perpetuates the 
belief in God as humanly circumscribed, — an 
error which impedes spiritual growth " ? 

While the Christian Scientist is steadily 
moving away from the petitional element with 
all that it involves of personal relationship, a 
scientific Christian, like Sir Oliver Lodge, is 
ever drawing nearer to it with these words: 
" Through prayer we admit our dependence on 
a higher power, for existence and health and 
everything we possess; we are encouraged 
to ask for whatever we need, as children ask 
parents; and we inevitably cry for mercy 
and comfort in times of tribulation and 
anguish." ^^ 

Nowhere in Mrs. Eddy's treatment of the 
subject is there the Gethsemane element of 
" if it be possible." Audible prayer she re- 
prehends. It imparts no understanding. It 
makes involuntary hypocrites. It brings no 
lasting benefit. " Lips must be mute and 
materialism silent, that man may have audi- 
ence with Spirit, the divine Principle, Love, 
which destroys all error." ^^ 

Prayer is reduced in Christian Science to 
mathematical exactness by the substitution of 
declaration for petition, and when Christian 
Science prayer is audible at all it is not prayer 



The Religion and Theology 157 

but merely a declaration of the relationship of 
Principle (God) to its idea (man). Clearer 
than any definition Mrs. Eddy gives of Chris- 
tian Science prayer, is one offered by her lect- 
urer, Miss Brookins, in the sentence, " An 
habitual declaration of man's unity with the 
divine and inexhaustible Life, the real and in- 
destructible Substance, the infinite and omni- 
potent Love, is the effectual prayer that 
availeth much, in that it heals and redeems the 
sin-sick and bodily infirm and casts out all 
manner of evil." *^ 

There is one barrier in the way of the 
Christian Science theory of prayer. The 
Lord's Prayer contains all the elements which 
Mrs. Eddy says prayer should not have. It 
was intended to be audible. At least it was 
in audible use in the public worship of the 
early Christians, who were within a genera- 
tion of Christ's time. Nothing could be more 
certainly petitional than " Give us this day our 
daily bread." There is more than a sugges- 
tion of " if it be possible " in " Thy kingdom 
come." But Mrs. Eddy is not to be daunted. 
Careless of her tenses, she explains away the 
plain meaning the Lord's Prayer has had all 
through the centuries, commands her explana- 
tion to be used invariably with it at all Chris- 



15^ Christian Science 

tian Science services, and prints it thus in her 
text-book : 

Our Father which art in heaven, 
Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious y 

Hallowed be Thy name. 
Adorable One, 

Thy kingdom come. 
Thy kingdom is within us. Thou art ever-present. 
Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. 
Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth — God 
is omnipotent, supreme. 
Give us this day our daily bread; 
Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished 
affections; 
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our 
debtors. 
And love is reflected in love; 

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver 
us from evil; 
And God leadeth us not into temptation, but de- 
livereth us from sin, disease and death. 
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and 
the glory, forever. 
For God is infinite, all Power, all Life, Truth, Love, 
over all, and All,^^ 

To one outside the Christian Science fold it 
is refreshing to turn from such unreal and un- 
warranted exegesis to the explanation Sir 
Oliver Lodge, comprehensive equally in his 
Christianity and his science, gives of the 



The Religion and Theology 159 

Lord's Prayer. He says that when we use it 
in these scientific days 

we first attune our spirit to the consciousness 
of the Divine Fatherhood; trying to realise His 
infinite holiness as well as His loving-kindness, de- 
siring that everything alien to His will should 
cease in our hearts and in the world, and longing 
for the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven. 
Then we ask for the supply of the ordinary needs 
of existence, and for the forgiveness of our sins and 
shortcomings just as we pardon those who have 
hurt us. We pray to be kept from evil influences, 
and to be protected when they attack us. Finally, 
we repose in the might, majesty, and dominion of 
the Eternal Goodness.^2 

Surprising as is Mrs. Eddy's effort to make 
prayer nothing more than declaration, far 
more surprising is her treatment of the sacra- 
ments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. 

Christian people generally agree that a 
sacrament is "an outward and visible sign of 
an inward and spiritual grace." They accept 
hterally Jesus' injunction to " teach all na- 
tions, baptising them," and St. Paul's testi- 
mony that 

I have received of the Lord that which also I 
delivered unto you. That the Lord Jesus the same 
night in which he was betrayed took bread: And 
when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said. 
Take, eat : this is my body, which is broken for you : 



i6o Christian Science 

this do in remembrance of me. After the same 
manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, 
saying, This is the new testament in my blood: this 
do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.^^ 

Christians perpetuate the sacraments of 
Baptism and the Lord's Supper because they 
beheve that in so doing they do the will of 
Jesus Christ. 

Mrs. Eddy sees nothing in a sacrament save 
a Roman soldier's oath, and one authorised 
to speak for her assures us that she honours 
the sacrament apart from its material symbol, 
as though the symbol were not itself the 
sacrament.** 

" Baptism," she says, " is a purification 
from all error." One student recalls how Mrs. 
Eddy once held a baptismal service without 
water, and no student, however earnestly he 
seeks, will ever find a font in any Christian 
Science church.*^ 

The Lord's Supper she long ago dismissed 
as " a dead rite." *^ She explains that Christ 
has come a second time in Christian Science 
and inquires, "If a friend be with us, why need 
we memorials of that friend?" The mother 
Church in Boston does have, not oftener than 
once a year, what Christian Scientists are 
pleased to call a " Silent Communion." But 



The Religion and Theology i6i 

it has no actual relationship with the Lord's 
Supper. " Our Eucharist," says Mrs. Eddy, 
" is spiritual communion with the one God. 
Our bread * which cometh down from heaven ' 
is Truth. Our cup is the Cross: our wine the 
inspiration of Love." *^ 

Worse than this, Mrs. Eddy calmly sug- 
gests the substitution of a breakfast for the 
historic Supper of the Christian Church. 
Read her amazing words : " What a contrast 
between our Lord's last supper and His last 
spiritual breakfast with His disciples in the 
bright morning hours, at the joyful meeting 
on the shore of the Galilean sea. . . . This 
spiritual meeting with our Lord, in the dawn 
of the new light, is the morning meal which 
Christian Scientists commemorate." ^^ 

Even Straus stopped short of substitution. 
He wrote, " Never at any time will it be pos- 
sible to rise above Him or to imagine any one 
who should ever be equal with Him." And 
yet Mrs. Eddy, without training in textual 
criticism, ventures to dismiss the historic Sup- 
per which Jesus established if He established 
anything, and to substitute for it a breakfast 
He nowhere hints He wanted or intended to 
establish. 

" The emphatic purpose of Christian Sci- 



1 62 Christian Science 

ence," says its founder, " is the heaUng of sin; 
and this task is a million times harder than the 
cure of disease." ^^ St. Paul could bear his 
thorn in the flesh. He could even suffer fools 
gladly. But sin wrung from him the bitter 
cry, " O wretched man that I am. Who shall 
deliver me from the body of this death? " 
Whatever sin may be in metaphysics it is real 
enough in life. It gets up with us in the 
morning. It is at our elbow all day long. It 
goes to bed with us at night; sometimes to 
haunt our dreams. It is grimly real. 

But what is sin in the catalogue of Christian 
Science? It is usually identified with evil. 
It " never did exist." It is the effect of error, 
and since error is the author of the unreal, 
sin, evil in general, is unreal. It bears " the 
same relation to good," says Mr. Farlow, 
'' that darkness bears to light. The psalmist 
said ' The darkness and the light are both alike 
to thee.' This was equivalent to declaring 
that to the supreme intelligence there is no 
darkness; all is light. God is good onmi- 
present ; hence there is no room for evil." ^^ 

At this point. Christian Science comes 
closer possibly than elsewhere to the liberal 
thinking of to-day. That evil is unreal in the 
sense that it is not to last forever many hold 



The Religion and Theology 163 

outside of Christian Science. Mystics even 
back to Dionysius go all the way with Mrs. 
Eddy in denial that evil is, in any sense, real. 
Browning says, " The evil is null, is nought, is 
silence implying sound " ^^; and R. J. Camp- 
bell urges us to break the fetters of sin by 
" the reassertion of the universal life." ^^ 

Christian Science finds its concept of evil in 
the fourth of Mrs. Eddy's fundamental pro- 
positions: "Life, God, omnipotent Good, 
deny death, evil, sin, disease." ^^ In confirma- 
tion of this the Scriptures are invoked by Mr. 
Farlow. But as often happens when used as 
an arsenal from which to draw proof texts, 
the Scriptures are far from conclusive. If 
the psalmist thought, as Mr. Farlow says, 
that God did not create the darkness and the 
evil of the world, Isaiah disagrees with him. 
Isaiah puts into the mouth of God the words : 
" I form the hght, and create the darkness : 
I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do 
all these things." If, as Mr. Farlow likes to 
tell us, after God had finished the creation of 
the world He " saw everything that he had 
made, and behold, it was very good," God 
would seem to have given recognition to the 
darkness, since He had, a while before, taken 
the trouble to " divide the light from the dark- 



164 Christian Science 

ness." The time has long since gone for prov- 
ing anything by proof texts. The whole 
sweep of the Bible has in these days to be re- 
garded, and it is enough to say that the Bible 
as a whole speaks with uncertain voice as to 
the origin of evil.^* 

Whether sin be philosophically real or not 
it is actual. Of the presence of sin in thought 
Mrs. Eddy is quite assured. She says the mind 
must be emptied of sin or sin will never cease, 
that to indulge in sin while asserting its un- 
reality is a moral offence, that the victory over 
sin will not be won till we strip off its mask.^^ 
But if there is in any of her writings the 
instinctive recoil from the actuality of sin, I 
have failed to find it. In spite of the fact 
which the world has long since proved, that 
sin, whatever it may be in theory, is in practice 
" not a want of light but a neglect of light," ^^ 
Mrs. Eddy speaks thus her final word: "If 
proper ward were kept over that lazar-house, 
that dismal cell and slaughter-house of in- 
famy, mortal mind, the broods of evil which 
infest it could be cleared out." 

The characteristic weakness of Mrs. Eddy's 
theory of sin is not, however, her failure to 
speak clearly about the actuality of sin, nor 
yet her pantheistic tendency which many 



The Religion and Theology 165 

critics have observed to confuse moral distinc- 
tions.^^ It is rather her extraordinary atti- 
tude toward the will. The will to do the right 
and to leave undone the wrong has no place 
in the plan of Christian Science. It is, like 
sin, an illusion. Its exercise is "detrimental 
to health and integrity of purpose." It is 
" the motive-power of error." It " produces 
evil continually." Though she hints at a 
higher will on higher business bent, the will 
with her is ordinarily that awful thing she 
calls animal magnetism.^^ 

Many pages in Science and Health are at 
first difficult to understand. Those which 
deal with animal magnetism are difficult also 
at last to understand. Quimby has no re- 
sponsibility for them. Had Mrs. Eddy 
possessed the knowledge she thought she had 
of Quimby she would never, as one of her old 
students writes me, have fallen into such an 
impossible conception. Had she even caught 
Quimby's wholesome spirit she could never 
have conjured up such a morbid explanation 
of her break with Kennedy and Spofford or 
dignified it into an actual doctrine in the third 
edition of her text-book. A student ventured 
once to suggest: "Don't you think the time 
has come to speak less of animal magnetism? " 



i66 Christian Science 

Whereat Mrs. Eddy sprang up from her desk 
and clapped her hands together, sharply cry- 
ing, " Leave me at once." ^^ 

There seems to be no adequate explanation 
of the strange hold her animal magnetism 
seems to have had on her. It might be called 
an obsession. Every religious leader is apt at 
some time to personalise the evil of the world. 
Nothing else will serve so many purposes. 
Years ago Mrs. Eddy found her devil. Her 
literary adviser in the eighties said, "Animal 
magnetism is her devil." Sometimes she calls 
it hypnotism, mesmerism, mortal mind, mali- 
cious animal magnetism as well as animal 
magnetism, and in her private correspondence 
she familiarly refers to it as " M. A. M." 

The clearest account of it is given under the 
heading of " Mortal Mind." She says it has 
no real existence ; it is nothing, while claiming 
to be something. And yet she admits it to 
be "an autocrat " and " the cause of organic 
disease." She says it " changes order into 
discord," " confers power on drugs," " pro- 
duces false beliefs," " convulses matter," 
" counterfeits divine justice," " creates its own 
conditions," " fills creation full of nameless 
children," " fills man with pain," " impresses 
its thoughts on body," "makes Spirit noth- 



The Religion and Theology 167 

ing," " rules all that is mortal," " transfers its 
fears to other minds," and "seeks to kill his 
fellow-mortals, morally and physically." ^^ 

If Mortal Mind does things so terrible, 
no wonder Mrs. Eddy calls it Satan.^^ No 
wonder she has spent her life in mortal terror 
of it. No wonder she once wrote a student 
who, she feared, was criticising her, " Wont 
you exercise reason and let me live, or will you 
kill me? Your mind is just what has brought 
on my relapse." ^^ No wonder she could bring 
herself a few years later to believe that her 
husband Dr. Eddy had been killed by " arseni- 
cal poison mentally administered," and that 
even a printing press might be put out of 
order by " M. A. M." No wonder her adopted 
son. Dr. Foster-Eddy, tells of days as dark 
and nights as black as those painted by Poe, 
when the unhappy woman fancied that evil 
minds were assailing her to her confusion and 
distress. No wonder that as recently as 1900 
she wrote him: " You are better removed from 
' M. A. M.' in Boston." No wonder that her 
true son came away from his last meeting 
with her a few months ago impressed with the 
effect of the terrible obsession on her mind and 
soul and has since had evidence of her belief 
that " M. A. M." is at the bottom of the late 



1 68 Christian Science 

lawsuit and of the criticism to which she is in 
her old age exposed. 

Stranger than Mrs. Eddy's situation is that 
of many of her followers who are troubled by 
the same obsession. I have talked with Chris- 
tian Scientists, great and small, who seem 
more certain of the personality of " M. A. M." 
than of the personality of God. I know 
directly, and I know of, good people ill who 
charge the tardiness of their recovery to the 
" M. A. M." which they are sure that un- 
believers send their way. Judge Clarkson of 
Omaha, Nebraska, left Christian Science be- 
cause its " M. A. M." became unbearable.^^ 
If Christian Science is to grow after Mrs. 
Eddy's death, her demonology, which is 
all her own and not Quimby's, must die 
with her. Otherwise it will drag the entire 
system up before that bar which no obsession 
ever yet has faced and lived, the bar of the 
universal sense of humour.^* 



CHAPTER VII 

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE HEALING 

The Supreme Test of Christian Science — Mrs. Eddy's 
Claim that Christian Science Cures all Diseases — Her 
Followers' Attitude — Venturesome Experiments — 
Concessions to Public Opinion — Inadequate Diagnoses 
— All Tests Declined — Mrs. Eddy's Attack upon the 
Doctors — Reply of Medicine and Surgery — Healing 
by Understanding of the Christian Science Theory — 
Practical Illustrations — Chemicalisation — Jesus' Way 
— Mental Healing through the Centuries — Pseudo- 
scientific and True Scientific Mental Healing — Prin- 
ciple Common to Both — The Possibilities and Limi- 
tations of Suggestion — Christian Science Admits no 
Limitations — Consequent Need of State Regulation — 
The Duty to the Truth. 

T^HOUGH the healing of the sinful may be, 
-■' as Mrs. Eddy says, the supreme interest 
of Christian Science, the healing of the sick she 
makes its supreme test. She stakes her whole 
philosophy in fact upon her therapeutics. 
The central principle that "Mind is All-in- 

169 



ijo Christian Science 

all " and that matter has no real existence is, 
we are assured, " demonstrated by healing the 
sick, and thus proven absolute and divine. 
This proof once seen, no other conclusion can 
be reached." 

The critical student of the movement wel- 
comes any test. Nothing else so simplifies a 
complex situation. And yet Mrs. Eddy's 
willingness to submit her philosophy to a 
therapeutic test argues a primitive conception 
of the relationship between philosophy and 
therapeutics. It suggests the Indian " medi- 
cine man " " demonstrating " ^ — a favourite 
M ord with savages as well as Christian Scien- 
tists — the truth of the impossible theology he 
holds, by noisily frightening the evil spirits 
out of the sick man. 

But if Mrs. Eddy can make out a case for 
the unparalleled efficacy of Christian- Science 
healing, no matter what the facts may prove 
or fail to prove, every book on medicine and 
theology will be discredited. Every doctor 
will abandon his profession, to become possi- 
bly a Christian- Science healer. Every cler- 
gyman will leave his pulpit, possibly to seek 
a readership in Christian Science worship. 
And doctors and clergymen, with Mrs. Eddy 
in mind, will say to one another what the 



da 



Christian Science Healing 171 

Pharisees said among themselves of Jesus, 
*' Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? behold, 
the world is gone after him." 

What is Mrs. Eddy's case? She claims 
three things for Christian Science healing: 

1. That it is " the most effective curative 
agent in medical practice." 

2. That it is Jesus' way of healing. 

3. That, abandoned in the early centuries 
by the Christian Church, it 

a. was first revived by her in 1866, and, 

b. is to-day employed by Christian Sci- 
ence alone. 

Her first claim rests upon her general prin- 
ciple that "Mind is AU-in-all." "Health," 
Mrs. Eddy says, " is not a condition of matter 
but of Mind; nor can the material senses bear 
reliable testimony on this subject. . . . The 
divine Principle of Science, reversing the 
testimony of the physical senses, reveals man 
as harmoniously existent in Truth, which is 
the only basis of health; and thus Science 
. . . heals the sick." ^ 

The principle is all-inclusive. If a man 
holds steadily to the belief that " Mind is All- 
in-all," if a man follows to the letter Mr. Far- 
low's counsel that " though the evidences of 
the senses may declare to the contrary we 



172 Christian Science 

should still stick to the spiritual truth and 
should continue to denounce the false evi- 
dences," he is certain to get well, no matter 
what his illness may appear to be. Organic 
diseases, Mrs. Eddy tells us, she has cured 
" as readily as functional disease." She has 
" healed hopeless disease, and raised the dying 
to health and life." She has stopped the 
bleeding of a wound in her own arm. " I 
healed," she says, " consumption in its last 
stages that M. D.'s declared incurable, the 
lungs being mostly consumed. I healed ma- 
lignant tubercular diphtheria. ... I healed 
a cancer that had so eaten the flesh of the neck 
as to expose the jugular vein so that it stood 
out like a cord." ^ 

Following closely in the steps of Jesus, she 
promises her followers the power to duplicate 
her healing work. After a few lessons, they go 
forth accredited to heal all manner of diseases. 
Consumption, of course, they are to cure since 
there are no lungs to become tuberculous. 
Children's diseases, even though contagious, 
will prove tractable; for the mother's fears 
have brought on the disease. Small-pox is not 
difficult; "mortal mind, not matter, contains 
and carries infection." Leprosy is as easy to 
relieve as when Moses made his hand leprous 



ta 



Christian Science Healing 173 

and unleprous at will by Christian Science 
methods. Palsy yields at once on the dis- 
covery that " muscles have no power to be 
lost." Cancer cannot hold its own if the 
belief in it be blotted out by " such powerful 
eloquence as a legislator would employ to de- 
feat the passage of an inhuman law." No fe- 
ver can withstand the fearlessness of matter. 
Brain diseases, even in advanced stages, dis- 
appear before the understanding that "actual 
Mind " cannot be overworked. Malformed 
limbs and other troubles of the bones, being 
"as directly the action of mortal error as in- 
sanity," are scarcely worth regarding. If 
Christian Science were clearly understood, 
" the human limb would be replaced as readily 
as the lobster's claw, — not with an artificial 
limb, but with the genuine one." Practically 
every disease is covered and any possible omis- 
sion would seem to be an inadvertence.^ 

Her followers have accepted all her claims 
with the same seriousness with which she has 
made them. Many of these her disciples have 
by personal experience illustrated, and other 
claims their observation has confirmed. Judge 
Hanna bears witness to Christian Science 
healing of cancers, consumption, and broken 
bones. Mr. Carol Norton adds to the list loco- 



174 Christian Science 

motor ataxia, paresis, and Bright's disease. 
Judge Clifford P. Smith solemnly affirms that 
Christian Science has cured people of every 
kind of disease known to the practice of medi- 
cine, whether considered curable or incurable 
by that system. And even a magazine writer 
like William Allen Johnston is impressed with 
the voluminous evidences steadily accumu- 
lating of the therapeutic value of Christian 
Science. ^ 

Healers trained by Mrs. Eddy or by 
her sanction have proved as daring as 
the founder of the system. One has en- 
deavoured to lift the drooping head of a wilted 
rubber plant. Another has essayed to send 
out healing currents from the mental battery 
of Christian Science toward horses, cows, and 
dogs. Another reports the " good-sized cav- 
ity " of an aching tooth filled up by mental 
treatment "not with foreign substance, but 
the genuine, white and perfect." ^ 

Mrs. Eddy herself gladly takes advantage 
of a dentist's offer of painless treatment of 
her teeth and gives the following ingenious 
reason why: 

Bishop Berkeley and I agree that all is Mind. 
Then, consistently with this premise, the conclusion 
is, that if I employ a dental surgeon, and he believes 



Christian Science Healing 175 

that the extraction of a tooth is made easier by 
some application of means which he employs, and 
I object to the employment of this means, I have 
turned the dentist's mental protest against myself, 
he thinks I must suffer because his method is in- 
terfered with. Therefore, his mental force weighs 
against a painless operation, whereas it should be 
put into the same scale as mine, thus producing a 
painless operation as a logical result. "^ 

Her accredited healers, encouraged by her 
statement that "Science can heal the sick who 
are absent from their healers, as well as those 
present, since space is no obstacle to mind," 
endeavour in their mental practice to eliminate 
all space conditions,^ 

Mrs. Eddy has learned prudence with the 
passing years. Without qualifying her as- 
sumption that the cure would always follow 
could conditions be controlled, she admits 
the temporary presence of unmanageable ele- 
ments. Public opinion, which she calls mortal 
mind, is so certain, she remarks, that arsenic, 
and strychnine in sufficient doses will cause 
death, that in spite of himself a Christian 
Scientist may die in the fulness of his faith 
if a " dose of poison is swallowed through mis- 
take. , . . The result is controlled by the 
majority of opinions outside, not by the in- 



1 76 Christian Science 

finitesimal minority of opinions in the sick 
chamber." ^ 

For the same reason, though surgery was 
once, when Eve was excised out of Adam's 
side, altogether mental and "Christian Science 
is always the most skilful surgeon," it is bet- 
ter to leave surgery and the adjustment of 
broken bones and dislocations, to the fingers 
of a surgeon, "until the advancing age 
admits the efficacy and supremacy of Mind." ^^ 

In deference also to the groundless fears 
of public opinion, " Mrs. Eddy advises that 
Christian Scientists do not at present treat 
contagious disease," ^^ 

What is one to say concerning Mrs. Eddy's 
claim that Christian Science is an invariable 
specific for all human ills? 

This first: A scientific test is needed, and 
Mrs. Eddy offers none in the averment that 
" the divine Principle of healing is proven 
in the personal experience of any sincere 
seeker of Truth."^^ That is but to beg the 
question. 

The growing disposition, voiced lately by 
the Committee on Publication, to admit some 
sort of diagnosis will not quite suffice. Di- 
agnosis is to some extent determined by the 
personality of the physician and no diagnos- 



Christian Science Healing 177 

tician is infallible. While practically all phy- 
sicians agree in diagnosing typhoid fever 
when the headache, weakness, loss of appetite, 
nosebleed, and increasing fever lead up to the 
characteristic rose spots and other abdominal 
symptoms, there are diseases Christian Sci- 
ence professes to cure which are extremely 
difficult to diagnose. 

When, therefore, Judge Hanna remarks 
that Christian Science has cured hundreds of 
cases of cancer, one wants to know whether the 
diagnosis was in each case made by a capable 
doctor or by the patient, whether the growth 
was by microscopical examination demon- 
strated to be actual cancer or one of those 
non-mahgnant tumors which have been known 
to disappear without treatment, whether the 
cancer was a cancer of the stomach or a case 
of ulceration or chronic gastric catarrh in 
which. Dr. Osier says, "a positive diagnosis is 
impossible." ^^ 

Seeking a scientific test which Christian 
Scientists would accept. Dr. J. B. Huber ^^ of 
New York some years ago addressed to Mrs. 
Stetson, then first reader in the foremost 
Christian Science church in New York city, 
a courteous letter containing such questions 
as the following: 



178 Christian Science 

How do you define health? 

How do you define disease? 

Do you investigate symptoms? 

Do you make diagnosis? 

In what does your treatment consist? 

Do you ever administer a material substance to 
a patient? 

Do you ever isolate a patient sick of an infectious 
disease? 

Do you ever treat structural disease, such as 
cancer or locomotor ataxia? 

Do you consider you have cured such disease? 

Can animals be cured by Christian Science 
methods? 

Mrs. Stetson forwarded the questions to 
Mrs. Eddy. Mrs. Eddy passed them on to 
Judge Hanna; and this was his reply: "My 
conclusion is that it will be wholly imprac- 
ticable — ^indeed I may say impossible — to 
answer these questions in such a manner as 
to make an entire paper fit for publication in 
a medical journal or in any other magazine 
or periodical." 

And yet any well-trained doctor in the land 
could and would have given a precise and 
comprehensive answer. 

An effort has been made by a psychologist ^^ 
to extract the information needed from 
Christian Scientists who have been healed of 



Christian Science Healing 179 

some disease. One evaded all the questions 
thus: 

Whereas, before I was healed from chronic inva- 
lidism through the teachings of Christian Science 
1 used to think much on your topics, I wish never to 
think or refer to them again. . . . They are men- 
tal poison to me. 

The leading questions, and, in another case, 
the answers were as follows: 

What was the nature of your malady f 

It had none. 

HoiD long had you heen afflicted with it ? 

Ever since the belief that disease was a sub- 
stantial reality, instead of a negation. 

How did you first discover that you were a victim 
of disease f Give fully your symptoms. 

By a consciousness of limitation, i. e., finiteness. 

How did the idea come to you that you could he 
healed f 

The conviction . . . that it was right to be well; 
and sickness was a wrong. 

Was your cure instantaneous f 

Yes. 

How did you know that you were cured f 

By the instant receding of disease, and the cor- 
responding increasing of health and strength. 

Did you know it at the time, or not until later f 

At the time: since Mind first perceiving the 
truth, its objective manifestation begins to appear. 

Did you have to test it, hefore becoming con- 
vinced that a cure had actually taken place f 



i8o Christian Science 

No: it brought its own self-evident proof with it. 

Not content with Judge Hanna's dis- 
appointing answer, Dr Huber undertook an 
investigation on his own account of Christian 
Science heahng. He ehminated, first, the 
downright failures which there is some reason 
to beheve are numerous. Then he made a 
careful examination of twenty so-called cures. 
Some were cured, he found, of diseases which 
they diagnosed themselves. Some under ex- 
amination broke down and resorted to evasion. 
In no instance was the cure such as to cause 
surprise to any doctor who knows from per- 
sonal experience that some get well who were 
not really ill, some because they cease to 
saturate their systems with unnecessary drugs, 
some because a new interest or a new affection 
sweeps them out of self, and a considerable 
percentage because they have in some way 
called up the power of natural recovery in- 
herent in the body in many instances. 

Mrs. Eddy never stays long on the de- 
fensive. She soon grows aggressive. She 
asserts that doctors have made no progress in 
the treatment of disease, that on the other hand 
they are to-day " flooding the world with dis- 
eases," and that the fewer the doctors, the less 
disease the world will suffer from.^^ 



Christian Science Healing i8i 

On many questions, history speaks with an 
uncertain voice, but not on this. History 
reports that positive and preventive medicine 
has in recent years decreased the death rate 
and increased the health and the longevity of 
the race beyond all credence. It is due in the 
main to medicine in the largest sense that 
Europe has no more of that " black death " 
which once swept millions out of life and de- 
populated cities, that the death rate of London 
has fallen from eighty to fifteen a thousand, 
and that of the British army in time of 
peace from seventeen to eight a thousand, and 
that in many sections fifteen years have been 
added to the average human life.^^ 

It is due in the main to medicine that 
typhoid fever, which once took off 1228 in a 
million, now takes off only 137; that yellow 
fever, once a menace to our great seaports, is 
now under stern control; that diphtheria, once 
often fatal, is now rarely fatal when treated 
promptly; that Manila, for the first time in 
its history, has gone six months without a case 
of infectious disease; and that pneumonia, 
hydrophobia, and malaria are ceasing to oc- 
casion the alarm they used to bring. 

It is due in the main to skilled medicine 
that in the recent Oriental war the Japanese 



i82 Christian Science 

army completely reversed the statistics of the 
Russo-Turkish War with its eighty thousand 
deaths from disease and twenty thousand from 
wounds and of our Spanish-American War 
with its 3681 deaths from disease and 293 from 
bullets, and that it lost from disease only 
11,992, while 52,946 died of wounds received 
in battle/^ 

In surgery, which Mrs. Eddy expects soon 
will become merely mental, the facts make 
even more convincingly against her. Anaes- 
thesia and asepsis have brought the mortality 
down in compound fractures from sixty per 
cent, to three, and in major amputations from 
fifty per cent, to two or three.^^ 

Deformed bones were once considered hope- 
less. A Glasgow surgeon not long ago had 
but five failures out of one thousand eight 
hundred operations, and all the five were due 
to complications. Of hernia, which once was 
seldom operated on at all, an Italian surgeon 
reports 262 cases with but one death, a French 
surgeon 376 with two deaths, and an Amer- 
ican surgeon 360 cases with one death. 

With these facts, merely of course represen- 
tative and not in any way exhaustive, to the 
credit of medicine and surgery one may well 
stand in pause before Mrs. Eddy's stout 



Christian Science Healing 183 

assertion that no progress has been made in 
medicine and surgery, that doctors are "flood- 
ing the world with diseases," that it is "not 
scientific to examine the body, in order to 
ascertain if we are in health," that the less 
known about hygiene the better, that we need 
" a body rendered pure by Mind, not by 
matter" [i. e. water], that massage "is an- 
other medical mistake," that food does not 
affect the real existence of man," that "dietetic 
theories " are " false reasoning," that " the 
daily ablutions of an infant are no more 
natural or necessary than would be the process 
of taking a fish out of water every day and 
covering it with dirt, in order to make it thrive 
more vigorously thereafter in its native 
element." ^^ 

Were we to act on Mrs. Eddy's strange 
assumptions, as we ought if they are war- 
ranted, all the beneficence of preventive medi- 
cine, and of the sanitary science which goes 
with it, would disappear. Filth and contag- 
ion would once more hold sway. Health 
boards would disappear. Problems of sew- 
erage and water-supply would go unsolved. 
Slums would continue slums until the end. 
Healers and " medicine men " would be the 
order of the day to the disorder of the 



1 84 Christian Science 

body. And in place of Florence Nightingale 
and Helen Gould and Anita Newcomb 
McGee, the angel of the modern battlefield 
would be Mary Baker G. Eddy from the 
serene security of Pleasant View radiating 
" absent treatment " to the firing line and to 
the hospital ward.^^ 

Pressed to submit the Christian Science 
cures to such tests as have in every instance 
preceded the statistics offered in respect to 
medicine and surgery, Mrs. Eddy answers: 
"I submitted my metaphysical system of 
treating disease to the broadest practical tests. 
Since then this system has gradually gained 
ground, and has proved itself, whenever 
scientifically employed, to be the most effec- 
tive curative agent in medical practice." ^^ 
Unfortunately, Mrs. Eddy has neglected to 
inform us when any test was made, on whom 
it was made, the circumstances of its making, 
the nature of the disease as determined by 
expert diagnosis, the time required to estab- 
lish a perfect cure, and whether there was, as 
has often happened in her own experience, 
a relapse. ^^ 

If Christian Science has ever cured malig- 
nant cancer, we want to know from an expert 
diagnostician that the disease was cancer and 



Christian Science Healing 185 

not a tumor, ulcer, or catarrh. If Christian 
Science has ever cured a case of palsy, we have 
the right to know whether the case was one 
of hysterical paralysis or functional para- 
plegia, or on the other hand actual paralysis 
due to structural disease of the spinal cord or 
of some other part of the motor-nerve system. 
If Christian Science has cured true diabetes, 
which Dr. Osler^^ says he has never seen cured, 
we have a right to know whether Fehling's 
test or Trommer's test or the fermentation 
test was used and whether it revealed diabetes 
or merely polyuria. If Christian Science has 
in any instance driven the malarial bacilli from 
their feast on the red corpuscles of the blood, 
we refuse to be convinced without a micro- 
scopic examination both before and after. 
And Mrs. Eddy's general statement that 
Christian Science healing has already " proved 
itself," is beside the mark. 

Pressed further, Mrs. Eddy says that no 
test is required. " The divine Principle is 
proven in the personal experience of any 
sincere seeker of Truth," and " those only 
quarrel with her method who have not under- 
stood her meaning, or, discerning the truth, 
come not to the light lest their works should 
be reproved." ^^ And then she places all who 



1 86 Christian Science 

in the interest of society would put Christian 
Science heahng to a truly scientific test in an 
embarrassing position. She adds to the charge 
of insincerity the suggestion that all are mor- 
ally unsound who want a scientific test, — an 
intimation which stills criticism at a cost which 
Christian Science can scarcely want to pay. 

Mrs. Eddy has another reason in reserve 
for refusing to accept a scientific test for 
Christian Science healing. There is, accord- 
ing to her theory, no case to test. How can 
there be a body to get ill when there is no 
matter to constitute a body? Admit the ex- 
istence of matter and we admit that mortal- 
ity (and therefore disease) has a foundation in 
fact. Deny the existence of matter, and we 
destroy the belief in these conditions and 
with it disappears the foundation of disease. 
Fevers are only "pictures depicted by mortal 
mind on the body." Inflammatory rheuma- 
tism comes not from exposure and infection 
but from fear. If you sprain a muscle or 
wound your flesh it is the mind that decides 
whether there shall be pain. " Colds, coughs, 
and contagion are engendered solely by mortal 
beHef." " Tumors, ulcers, tubercles, deformed 
spines are all dream shadows, dark images of 
mortal thought, which will flee before the 



Christian Science Healing 187 

light." And so all efforts to determine in the 
only way we can whether Christian Science is 
*' the most effective curative agent in medical 
practice " lead to no result, and we pass on 
to Mrs. Eddy's next assumption.^^ 

The Christian Science way of healing, 
says Mrs. Eddy, is the way that Jesus took. 

What is the Christian Science way of heal- 
ing? It is, the text-book indicates, the 
complete comprehension of " the Principle of 
Christian Science." 

Nothing more is needed to effect a cure. 
" We never read that Jesus made a diagnosis 
of disease, in order to discover some means 
of healing it. He never asked if it were 
acute or chronic. He never recommended 
attention to laws of health, never gave drugs, 
never prayed to know if God were willing a 
man should live. He understood man to be 
inmiortal, whose Life is God, — and not that 
man has two lives, one to be destroyed and the 
other to be made indestructible." ^^ 

Christian Science heals, therefore, by giv- 
ing patients proper understanding. God is 
Principle. Man is God's idea, image, and 
reflection. 

Your mirrored reflection is your own image, or 
likeness. If you lift a weight, your reflection does 



/ 



i88 Christian Science 

this also. If you speak, the lips of this likeness 
move in accord with yours. Now compare man, be- 
fore the mirror, to his divine Principle, God. Call 
the mirror divine Science, and call man the reflec- 
tion. Then note how true, according to Christian 
Science, is the reflection to its original. As in the 
mirror the reflection of yourself appears, so you, 
being spiritual, are the reflection of God. The sub- 
stance, Life, Intelligence, Truth, and Love, which 
constitute Deity, are reflected by His creation; and 
we shall see this true likeness and reflection every- 
where, when we subordinate the false testimony of 
the corporeal senses to the facts of Spirit." ^7 

The Christian Science healer learns to do 
this therapeutic trick in a very brief time. 
After a few lessons he goes forth to banish 
illness by denying that there are bodies to be 
ill, by erasing " the images of disease from 
mortal mind," by convincing mortal mind that 
it does not exist and that therefore its beUefs, 
which cause trouble, have no real existence.^^ 

Always begin your treatment by allaying the 
fear of patients. ... If you succeed in wholly 
removing the fear, your patient is healed. [Plead 
the case silently. By naming the disease audibly] 
you are liable to impress it upon the thought . . . 
Mentally insist that harmony is the everlasting fact, 
and sickness the temporal falsity. Realise the 
pressure of health, and the fact of harmonious 



Christian Science Healing 189 

functions and organs until the corporeal senses 
correspond with these normal conditions.^^ 

If the patient seems to grow worse, do not 
be alarmed. " Calm the fear and confusion 
induced by chemicalisation, which is the alter- 
native effect produced by Truth upon error; 
and sometimes explain the symptoms and 
their cause to the patient." ^^ 

Mind will win at last. Death itself will 
one day be destroyed, for " death is but an- 
other phase of the dream that existence can 
be structural." "A demonstration of the 
facts of Soul, in Jesus' way, resolves the 
dark visions of sense into harmony and im- 
mortality." ^^ 

" In Jesus' way." What was Jesus' way? 
One cannot be sure. About His methods 
Jesus was habitually silent. " Thy faith hath 
made thee whole" was as far as Jesus ever 
went in explanation of His cures. He never 
used the formulas of Mrs. Eddy. He never 
set forth any such metaphysical conception 
of the relationship of God and man as 
Mrs. Eddy entertains. He never even hinted 
that matter has no real existence and that in 
consequence men have no bodies to get ill. 

Jesus always spoke and acted as though 
He had a body. He appeared at times to 



190 Christian Science 

suffer some discomfort from His body. He 
seemed to be weary by the well of Jacob and 
upon the cross He sighed, " I thirst." He 
seemed to be hungry in the wilderness and 
on the shore of Galilee. He seemed to feel 
the piercing thorns. He seemed to find the 
cross a heavy load to bear along the via 
dolorosa. Once at least He cried out upon 
the cross as though in pain. Did He really 
feel the pain? Or did He know what Mrs. 
Eddy knows, that pain is non-existent? And 
was He therefore acting out a role He knew 
was false? 

Mrs. Eddy is between the horns of a 
dilemma. How can she escape? If the pain 
of the crucifixion was as real as it appears to 
one who reads the poignant story to have 
been, then Jesus did not know, what Mrs. 
Eddy knows, that there is no pain in life and 
never has been pain. If Jesus felt no pain 
then He was the most consunmiate actor in 
all history, and since He took pains to create 
the impression that He suffered pain He 
added to the role of actor that of a deceiver 
of the world He came to save. 

Mrs. Eddy perceives her dilemma and be- 
takes herself again to her pet heresy. Once 
more she divides the personality of Jesus 



Christian Science Healing 191 

Christ into two unequal parts: one of which, 
Jesus, suffered; the other, Christ, could not 
suffer, because under Mrs. Eddy's treatment 
He is resolved into a mere abstraction. She 
speaks for herself: "Jesus suffered, but the 
eternal Christ never suffered: for Christ is 
the idea of truth, and this idea comes to heal 
sickness and sin through Christian Science." ^^ 

Mrs. Eddy escapes from her dilemma, but 
she leaves Jesus in a worse plight than she was 
in. She degrades Him to a position lower 
than her own, lower than that of her followers. 
She knows there is no pain. She makes all 
healing dependent on the patient's full con- 
viction that there is no pain. And yet she 
says of Jesus that when He " felt our infirm- 
ities He had not conquered all the beliefs of 
the flesh, or His sense of material life, nor 
had He risen to His final demonstration of 
spiritual power." ^^ 

Mrs. Eddy understands, her followers 
understand, the truth about pain; but Jesus 
did not understand. He was not so wise as 
she. He was a fledgling, not a full-grown 
Christian Scientist. Mrs. Eddy saves herself 
from the cul de sac into which her novel think- 
ing leads her, but she leads Jesus into a worse 
one, and, extracting the Christ principle from 



192 Christian Science 

Him in order to have a Christ to come again 
one day in Christian Science, she there leaves 
Jesus evermore, less than man according to 
the Christian Science pattern, far less than 
the woman who interprets Him. 

The Christian Science way as Mrs. Eddy 
points it out can scarcely be the way which 
Jesus took to heal the sick. 

Granted in the interest of discussion that 
Christian Science healing is the mental healing 
of Jesus and the early Church, has there been 
no healing like it in the ages since till Mrs. 
Eddy's day? 

Once more, appeal is possible to facts.^* 
All along the Christian centuries, if history 
is credible, witnesses have testified in all de- 
voutness and sincerity to Christian healing. 
Athanasius, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and Au- 
gustine cite instances in the fourth cen- 
tury. In the fifth, we have the testimony of 
Hilary and Jerome. Gregory the Great, 
Augustine of Canterbury, and Cyril testify 
for the sixth century. Cuthbert and Bede had 
cures accredited to them. Eginhard, an inti- 
mate of Charlemagne, set down in a book his 
observations of extraordinary cases. 

The so-called " false miracles " of the dark 
ages, wrought through faith in bones and 



Christian Science Healing 193 

relics, were works of mental healing if they 
were anything at all. Catharine of Siena, in 
1373, called a priest back from the gates of 
death, and Luther thought he kept two men 
from the grave by prayer. Bishop Parkhurst 
and D'Aubigne bear witness to the marvels of 
the sixteenth century. Charles II. touched 
one hundred thousand persons suffering from 
the king's evil (scrofula), and Queen Anne 
laid her healing hand on young Samuel 
Johnson. Moravians, Waldenses, Puritans, 
Presbyterians, Huguenots, Baptists, Method- 
ists, all in one way or another bridged the 
gulf between the Reformation and the nine- 
teenth century by their healing works. 

There was not a decade in the nineteenth 
century but had some testimony to give con- 
cerning mental healing, done of tenest in Jesus' 
name. The story of Sir Humphry Davy and 
his palsy patient, who mistook the clinical 
thermometer placed beneath his tongue for a 
new remedy and rapidly got well, is a staple 
among mental healing stories. Parson Chi- 
niquy was cured of typhoid fever in 1837 by 
a vision of St. Anne and again in 1858 by the 
will to get well. Parson Blumhardt, with his 
faith healing on the continent, was matching 
Quimby and his work at the same period in 



194 Christian Science 

this country. And since the httle shepherdess 
had her vision of the Virgin fifty years ago 
such miracles of Christian heahng have been 
worked atLourdes that Charcot in his later life 
every year sent patients whom he could not 
cure in his hospital to the little town in the 
Pyrenees and seldom sent in vain. Mrs. 
Eddy, Dowie, Simpson, Schlatter, Schrader, 
and Bradley Newell have all been names to 
conjure with in recent years. After two 
years of patient study, on such terms as were 
obtainable, of some sixteen hundred cures 
attributed to them. Professor Goddard, 
trained psychologist, reports that the dis- 
eases, according to the patient's word, covered 
almost the whole field of pathology, with 
nervous troubles in the lead; 33 per cent, of 
the patients claimed to have been instantane- 
ously healed, 50 per cent, gradually, and 17 
per cent, incompletely. 

Professor Goddard's final judgment con- 
cerning all such mental healers is: 

They aH cure disease and they aH have failures. 
They all cure the same kind of diseases and the 
same diseases are incurable for them all. In 
those classes of disease where the cures are 
wrought, there are the same percentages of cures 
by all the methods. Stripped of a few character- 



Christian Science Healing 19S 

istic phrases the reports from all the different forms 
are the same. A testimonial to a patent medicine, 
for example, reads precisely like one of Dowie's re- 
ports of a divine healing cure. Again there are 
many records of people going from one school to 
another and in this no one practice seems to show 
any advantage. Some fail after trying all. Some 
fail to get cured by divine healing, but get restored 
by Christian Science, and vice versa. Others fail 
with Christian Science and are successful in hyp- 
notism, and vice versa.^^ 

But there is, these days, drugless healing 
of which it is possible to speak with more 
precision. It is the mental healing to the un- 
disputed credit of the nervous specialists of 
standing in the medical profession. The 
diagnosis in each instance is as nearly accurate 
as diagnosis can be. The methods have no 
mystery enshrouding them. The results are 
as beneficial as perhaps can be secured. And 
no cure is announced that will not stand the 
test to which Christian Science steadily re- 
fuses to submit its cures. 

Van Rhenterghem reports that of 162 cases 
of rheumatism, hysteria, neuralgia, epilepsy, 
indigestion, and deafness which he treated 
without medicine 91 were cured, 46 im- 
proved, and 25 did not improve.^^ Parkyn, 
who treats only nervous troubles, reports a 



196 Christian Science 

cure in every ease of nervous prostration. 
Bernheim's De la Suggestion a la Thera- 
peutics is a continuous chronicle of the drug- 
less cure of cerebral hemorrhage, paresis of 
traumatic origin, violent hysteria, nervous 
aphonia, general chorea, chronic gastritis, 
epigastric pain, rheumatism, neuralgia, and 
insomnia. Dubois's book, recently translated, 
on The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Dis- 
orders^ makes clear — for Dr. Dubois has had 
twenty years of successful practice at Berne — 
that mental healing is as surely a specific for 
neurasthenia, hysteria, hypochondria, melan- 
cholia, and the other well-known ills which lie 
between normal health and insanity, as quinine 
is for malaria. 

Including, as we should, hypnotism in the 
catalogue of mental healing, we find results 
that will stand any test. Of 414 cases, which in- 
cluded 29 organic diseases, 39 severe neu- 
roses, 60 mental diseases, 233 neuropathic 
disorders, and 44 functional derangements, 28 
per cent, were permanently cured, 27 per cent, 
visibly improved, 26 per cent, received some 
benefit, 20 per cent, were not affected one way 
or the other, and in one per cent, the result was 
unknown. 

As to surgery, which Mrs. Eddy would 



Christian Science Healing 197 

for the present leave to the surgeon, even 
major operations have been performed with 
hypnotism in the place of etherisation. As 
long ago as 1846 Esdaile was by means of 
hypnotism amputating arms and legs without 
causing pain; and more than a dozen Euro- 
pean specialists have repeatedly conducted 
women through the perils of childbirth with- 
out consciousness, recollection, or any painful 
after consequences.^^ 

But the catalogue of drugless healing is not 
to-day complete without a word concerning 
the Emmanuel Movement in progress this 
year past in Boston, almost within the shadow 
of the Christian Science church. The move- 
ment is based upon sound principles. It rec- 
ognises the limitations of suggestion. It deals 
only with functional and nervous disorders. 
Diagnosis is invariably made by an expert 
physician. Suggestion is reenforced at every 
point by faith in the fundamentals of historic 
Christianity. It is, in fact, a serious "at- 
tempt to weld into friendly alliance the most 
advanced medico-psychological knowledge of 
our time and a primitive. New Testament 
Christianity, as scholarship has disclosed it." 

Though results have not as yet been sys- 
tematically reported, it seems likely to those 



19^ Christian Science 

who have made a careful study of the move- 
ment that this year past hundreds of cases of 
neurasthenia, hysteria, hypochondria, insomnia, 
certain forms of paralysis, various functional 
disturbances, suicidal tendencies, and im- 
moral habits have been permanently cured. It 
was with this experiment in mind that Dr. 
Llewellys F. Barker, who succeeded Dr. Osier 
at the Johns Hopkins University, recently re- 
marked: " Men and women, generally, as well 
as medicine and science, are coming to a real- 
isation of the high part played by the mind 
in matters affecting the body. But this know- 
ledge can only exert its full and true value 
through a proper combination of the best 
revealed science and religion." ^* 

What is the principle — for there must be 
one — which underlies all mental healing, 
whether that of Christian Science, the New 
Thought, the nervous specialist, the Emman- 
uel Movement, or the family doctor who is 
constantly employing it without pretension or 
profession? 

Three hundred years before Mrs. Eddy 
announced that " whatever is cherished in 
mortal mind as the physical condition is 
imaged forth on the body," Spenser wrote: 

" For of the soule, the bodie forme doth take, 
For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make." 



Christian Science Healing 199 

But for a scientific statement we turn 
again to the psychologist. Professor God- 
dard says; " The idea of health tends to pro- 
duce health in proportion to the strength of 
the idea to be met, or inversely as the opposi- 
tion to be met." ^^ 

Now the principle emerges into view. It 
is the idea of good health that tends to bring 
good health. It is the suggestion of the idea 
that constitutes the common principle we seek. 
Some mental healers resort to one device in 
suggesting the idea; others to another. 
Whatever gives the greatest impetus to the 
^iuggestion is the most effective. Mrs. Eddy's 
metaphysics has in itself, probably, no more 
therapeutic value than the tom-tom of the 
'' medicine man." A false belief, as Paracel- 
sas and Pomponazzi remarked centuries ago, 
may be as efficacious for therapeutic purposes 
as a true one. Christian Science has won a 
place in mental therapeutics not because it has 
discovered any principle in place of the com- 
mon principle of suggestion, but because its 
founder, gifted as she is with unusual hypnotic 
power> has made its strange metaphysics a 
motive power to suggestion. 

But suggestion has its limitations. If 
every idea does tend to "generate its actu- 
ality," the tendency is sometimes checked. 



200 Christian Science 

There are certain anatomical changes that 
frustrate the mind's desire to replace "as 
readily as the lobster's claw " the limb lost in 
the railway accident. There are certain hard 
and stubborn facts which would seem to stay 
the mental healing of the wilted rubber plant 
and the sick horse. 

These limitations are not always easy to 
describe. But they are usually recognisable. 
Allowance must invariably be made for them. 
The way of Christian Science is strewn with 
broken hearts and maimed bodies, ruined 
health and lives sacrificed, because under the 
hypnotic spell of Mrs. Eddy her subjects have 
refused, except under compulsion of public in- 
dignation or of the law, to make such allow- 
ance. Christian Scientists may take comfort 
from the words of Professor William James, 
pragmatist as he is, that the state is not called 
upon to pronounce between rival schools of 
medicine, but the intelligent public will not 
give to Christian Science the free hand it de- 
sires and means to have, until definite assur- 
ance has been given that Christian Scientists 
do recognise the limitations of the principle of 
suggestion and are content to do their work 
within those limitations. 

It is in the hypnotic treatment of disease 



Christian Science Healing 201 

that suggestion becomes an actual specific. 
Hypnotism is nothing but suggestion so per- 
sistent and profound as to induce an artificial 
sleep in which all mental opposition is silenced 
and all possible untoward influences are ex- 
cluded. There are dangers in its use as there 
are dangers in the use of all good things. It 
can conceivably be put, and sometimes is put, 
to questionable purposes; so, too, is arsenic. 
But for Mrs. Eddy to fulminate against 
hypnotism on the score that it is " error," 
" mental malpractice," " animal magnetism," 
and to threaten excommunication to the fol- 
lower who, for instance, may want to read his 
Bramwell or his Moll or the new edition of 
Lloyd Tuckey's monumental work, is to add 
to the tale of evidence steadily accumulating 
that Mrs. Eddy knows no science save the 
pseudo-science she herself sets up, and is to 
disqualify her and her interpreters to speak on 
any mental therapeutic question. 

The conclusion, then, to which one comes at 
last is this: that, Hke all other systems of 
mental healing, Christian Science rests upon 
the well-established principle of suggestion. 
The philosophy of Christian Science is purely 
adventitious, as is proved by the career of 
Quimby, who, according to his pupil, Dr, 



202 Christian Science 

Evans, obtained large results merely by sug- 
gestion/^ Its exact therapeutic value, in spite 
of the amazing testimonials it presents, cannot 
be determined till Christian Science is ready 
to submit its cures to truly scientific tests. 
That Christian Science does call for state 
regulation is evident to those who believe the 
state has duties to her adult ignorant as well 
as to her little children. 

One would be as generous as possible to any 
faith which can re-enforce suggestion. But 
there is a duty to the mind as well as to the 
body, and if one must choose between the 
good health of mind which always comes from 
cleaving to the truth and the good health of 
body which may come in certain cases with the 
acceptance of a false philosophy, the normal 
and the wholesome will prefer to 

** Look straight out — 
See things — not try to evade them. 
Facts shall be facts for me, and the truth the 
truth forever." ^1 



CHAPTER VIII 

MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY 

The Gravest Defect — Christian Science Ascetic — Mrs. 
Eddy's Testimony Prompted by her Personal Ex- 
perience — Denies the Sacramental Use of Matter — 
Misinterprets Jesus' Words — Teaches Possibility of 
Race Perpetuation without Marriage — Some Ex- 
planations which do not Explain — Simultaneous Con- 
tradictions — The Testimony of the Manual and the 
Lesson Quarterly — The Obvious Tendency — Public 
Opinion Making Ready for a Final Judgment — The 
Alternative — Duty of the Hour. 

npHE gravest defect of the Christian Science 
^ system yet remains to be considered. 
Christian Science is in essence ascetic. I use 
the word advisedly. I have read and re-read 
in seven editions of Science and Healthy rang- 
ing from 1875 to 1906, Mrs. Eddy's chapter 
on marriage. I find in it many high ideals, 
many practical suggestions. It is gratifying 
to hear any woman, and especially a woman 

203 



204 Christian Science 

whose matrimonial experiences have been so 
varied and unsatisfying that she writes, mar- 
riage " is often convenient, sometimes pleas- 
ant, and occasionally a love affair," ^ lift her 
voice against divorce and counsel married 
people to stay married until death. I know 
that some families have been blessed by the 
conversion of their members to Christian Sci- 
ence. I know that a new conception of the 
dignity and spiritual value of self-control has 
been lodged in many a mind. I know that 
many a husband has been reclaimed from dis- 
sipation, many a wife from frivolity, by the 
call of the spiritual which in spite of all its 
error does echo from Science and Health, 

And yet, allowing liberally for all that, 
Christian Science is in essence ascetic. Mrs. 
Eddy says it is, and she should know. " Is 
marriage nearer right than celibacy? " she in- 
quires, and then replies, "Human knowledge 
inculcates that it is, while Science indicates 
that it is not." ^ By its insistence on the un- 
reality of matter Christian Science logically 
disavows the sacramental character of mar- 
riage, makes it but a temporary stage in the 
development of the race, and loosens the ties 
affection or kinship forms. 

I could give instances — for I have made 



Marriage and the Family 205 

inquiries far and wide — in which famihes that 
have for long years known only happiness and 
concord have suddenly become the prey of 
discord and division,^ in which the love of 
husbands for wives and fathers for children 
has dissolved into an unfortunate aloofness, in 
which wives have ceased, except in name, to 
live as wives and mothers have come to think 
of children as millstones round their necks, in 
which daughters have ceased to be daughters 
except before the world, and sisters have 
separated for all time from sisters who de- 
clined to go with them into Christian Sci- 
ence, in which lovers have broken their en- 
gagement and friends have given up their 
life-long friendship for no reason save a dif- 
ference in the point of view concerning what 
is nothing after all except a problem in pure 
metaphysics. 

Some men may for good reasons remain 
celibate as Jesus did, and there is on them no 
reflection. Some women may be virgins till 
the last, and that, too, is apparently the will 
of God for some. But the norm is never 
celibate or virginal. The norm is marriage, 
because only in the perfect union of a man 
and woman is there at the same time promise 
to the individual of completeness, and to the 



2o6 Christian Science 

race perpetuation in circumstances that ensure 
the proper training of the young. 

You will seek in vain in the pages of Science 
and Health for any evidence that this fact, 
perhaps the most important fact in sociology, 
has any place in Mrs. Eddy's mind. Holding 
that there is no such thing as matter, she sees 
no sacramental use for matter. Believing that 
"matter is not the medium through which the 
Spirit acts," ^ it is impossible for her to take 
the view of marriage which those hold who 
have the sacramental view of matter. No 
intellect can be big enough to contain two 
views that flatly contradict each other. 
I With this in mind, it is easy to understand 

Mrs. Eddy's treatment of marriage and the 
family. She goes back once again to Jesus. 
She explains the immaculate conception by 
the identification of Christian Science with 
the Holy Ghost : " The Science of being 
overshadowed the sense of the Virgin mother, 
with a full recognition that Spirit is the basis 
of being." ^ She calls " His birth what every 
one's should be." ^ She says the time is 
coming of which Jesus spoke when He de- 
clared that there shall be no more marrying 
nor giving in marriage. She insists that 
'' matrimony must lose its present slippery 



Marriage and the Family 207 

footing and find permanence in a more spir- 
itual adherence." ^ Though " to abohsh mar- 
riage at this period, and maintain moraUty 
and generation, would put ingenuity to ludi- 
crous shifts," she still insists that " this is 
possible." ^ She longs for a day when mar- 
riage shall have passed away, and adds: 
"Proportionately as human generation ceases, 
the unbroken links of eternal harmonious be- 
ing will be spiritually discerned; and man not 
of the earth earthly but coexistent with God 
will appear." ^ 

Now what does all this mean? What can 
it mean but this: that as the Holy Ghost, 
who Mrs. Eddy says is really Christian Sci- 
ence, once overshadowed a woman and the 
Virgin Birth was the result, so will it be again 
when women submit themselves to Christian 
Science as the mother of the Master did. 

Mrs. Eddy makes appeal to Scriptures. 
She regards marriage, her interpreter remarks, 
" in the exact sense in which it is taught in 
the Scriptures." He explains that " Christian 
Science, like Christianity, points to the higher 
spiritual life above and beyond the pale of 
marriage as Jesus did in His declaration ' but 
they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain 
that world, and the resurrection from the dead^ 



2o8 Christian Science 

neither marry, nor are given in marriage.' " 
Nothing could be clearer than these words. 
The trouble is that they furnish another glar- 
ing instance of the proof -text habit which 
has often brought the Christian Scientists to 
grief. The passage quoted from St. Luke 
appears in its essentials also in St. Matthew 
and St. Mark, and taken with the context in 
each instance evidently means that marriage, 
birth, and death belong together in this world, 
and will therefore have no place in the world 
to come. It means nothing more than that and 
cannot be given a Christian Science colouring. 
Jesus often spoke about the resurrection life 
as though it is to have no sacramental interests 
since the body then will be no longer physical 
but spiritual. ^^ 

St. Paul lights up the situation with his 
conception, for which many words of Jesus 
furnish apparent justification, of the im- 
mediate second coming of our Lord. He 
writes to the Thessalonians : 

For the Lord himself shall descend from Heaven 
with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and 
with the trump of God : and the dead in Christ shall 
rise first. Then we which are alive and remain 
shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, 
to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever 
be with the Lord. ^^ 



Marriage and the Family 209 

But Mrs. Eddy teaches, as we have long 
since learned, that the body is already as 
spiritual as it will ever be if we will but believe 
it is, and that Christ has already come again in 
Christian Science. The time is therefore evi- 
dently ripe for all who would live up to the 
central principle of Christian Science, to pro- 
claim with the mad Hamlet : " We will have 
no more marriages: those that are married al- 
ready . . . shall live; the rest shall keep as 
they are." 

In the face of all these facts Mrs. Eddy's 
spokesman still insists that she is conventional 
in her views of marriage. He says she has 
never advocated any other method for the 
perpetuation of the species and singles out 
in proof a doubtful word from her Retro- 
spection and Introspection,^^ 

The appeal is made to Caesar, To Caesar 
let us go. 

In the first edition of Science and Healthy 
published in 1875, Mrs. Eddy puts herself on 
record thus: 

The material world, at a future time will become 
a spectacle of disorder and dismay on one hand, 
and of Science on the other. There will be convul- 
sions of mind and consequently of matter, spasms, 
earthquakes, famine, and pestilence. Sickness will 
14 



210 Christian Science 

become acute and death more sudden: but to 
those who understand this hour, as explained in 
the science of being, length of days will increase, 
and harmony and immortality be near, even at the 
door. Knowledge will then diminish and lose 
estimate in the sight of man: and spirit instead of 
matter be made the basis of generation. ^^ 

In 1881 we find her writing: " The time 
Cometh when there will be no marrying or 
giving in marriage. . . . Soul will ultimately 
claim its own, and the voice of personal sense 
be hushed." ^^ In 1888 she states that "mar- 
riage is the only legal and moral provision 
for generation among the higher species"; 
but then she neutralises her words by the hint 
that marriage will no longer be when people 
learn that " generation rests on no sexual 
basis." ^^ Ten years later she remarks that 
reproduction is due to belief, and in illustra- 
tion later adds: "The propagation of their 
species by butterfly, bee, and moth, without 
the customary presence of male companions, 
is a discovery corroborative of Science of 
Mind." ^« 

Troubled by the storm of criticism, in the 
latest editions of Science and Healthy Mrs. 
Eddy sets herself at the correction of the 
reader's true impression of her views. She 



Marriage and the Family 211 

vows in 1906 that the only person she has 
ever known who believed in agamogenesis 
" was suffering from incipient insanity," ^^ 
and hints that she is not that person. But it 
is difficult to take Mrs. Eddy seriously when 
in the next paragraph appears the sentence 
that " proportionately as human generation 
ceases, the unbroken links of eternal harmo- 
nious being will be spiritually discerned " ^^ ; 
when later in the book there reappears the 
analogy above of the butterfly and bee and 
moth; and when she states outright that "to 
no longer marry or be given in marriage" does 
not mean race suicide.^^ 

But if we have failed to grasp the meaning 
of Mrs. Eddy's words, if we are to be guided 
solely by her latest, not her earlier utterances, 
and to assume that the correction of some 
passages implies the correction of all, if Mrs. 
Eddy does believe with heart and soul in the 
perpetuation of the species sacramentally 
through marriage in the years to come as in 
these ages past, why does not the great organ in 
the Mother Church at Boston more frequently 
peal out the wedding march? Why is no 
Christian Scientist specially commissioned to 
solemnise a marriage? Why is the Church 
Manual, which is so explicit in its directions 



212 Christian Science 

on all other themes, silent as to marriage, 
except for this one ominous note: "If a 
Christian Scientist is to be married, the 
ceremony shall be performed by a clergyman 
[of some other fold] who is legally author- 
ised "? ^^ And why has not the Mother Church 
in Boston, with its seating capacity of five 
thousand and its resident membership doubt- 
less larger, made provisions for a larger Sun- 
day-school than one of two hundred and fifty 
members ? ^^ 

Is it conceivable that informed Christian 
Scientists are ignorant of these facts which 
an outside student has so easily unearthed? 
Certainly no Christian Scientist can be unin- 
formed who was at a Christian Science service 
anywhere on Sunday, May 5, 1907. For 
according to the directions of the Christian 
Science Lesson Quarterly j, which has the sanc- 
tion of the sage of Pleasant View, every 
Second Reader in the world read to the 
Christian Science thousands everywhere that 
day these words from the Bible: "After 
this I looked and, behold, a door was opened 
in heaven: and the first voice which I heard 
was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; 
which said Come up hither, and I will shew 
thee things which must be hereafter." And 



Marriage and the Family 213 

then the First Reader antiphoned in voice so- 
norous and mellifluous : " Proportionately as 
human generation ceases, the unbroken hnks 
of eternal harmonious being will be spiritually 
discerned." 

The American public, which insists upon 
publicity on all dark spots in pubhc life to- 
day, is beginning to suspect that Mrs. Eddy, 
who has had three husbands and one child, has 
one view for her followers and another for the 
world, that she is secretly encouraging the 
dangerous theory that marriage and celibacy 
are now possible, or will some day be, in the 
same home without race suicide ^^ and disa- 
vowing it through her official representatives 
when questioned by the now suspicious pub- 
lic. If the suspicion is unwarranted, it can 
be allayed not by overlaying the objectionable 
passages with explanations which do not en- 
lighten, but by cutting them out root and 
branch. 

There is no reason for alarm, 't is said. It 
may be centuries before " the world reaches 
the point of perfect spirituality where there 
will be no flesh to propagate." 

The duty is, however, Mrs. Eddy constantly 
insists, to make ready for the day. Give up 
your sacramental view of life. Put off the 



214 Christian Science 

obligations it involves. There is a higher es- 
tate in marriage than parenthood, and any 
woman who can win her husband's consent 
may decline motherhood to " win a higher " 
married state.^^ " He that loveth father or 
mother more than me is not worthy of me," ^* 
Mrs. Eddy announces even to prospective ser- 
vants. " Jesus," she says, " acknowledged 
no ties of the flesh." ^^ Jesus " teaches mor- 
tals to lay down their fleshliness in order to gain 
spirituality," she remarks in curious confusion 
of the flesh with the ties of the flesh. The 
duty is to make the least and not the most of 
all relationships.^^ God " is man's only real 
relative on earth and in heaven." ^^ " Would 
existence be to you a blank without personal 
friends? " " This vacuum must be filled with 
Principle instead of person." ^^ Do you long 
for 

" . . . the touch of a vanished hand, 
And the sound of a voice that is still " ? 

" When our friends pass from our sight and 
we lament, that lamentation is needless and 
causeless." ^^ 

" Pain and grief are shards of the poignant dream 
That matter is supreme.^' ^^ 

But why multiply our instances? Now we 



Marriage and the Family 215 

see whither Christian Science tends. It tends 
ultimately, when a generation of pure Chris- 
tian Scientists shall have succeeded this, more 
Christian after all than Christian Scientist, to- 
ward the disintegration of the family. 

If there is one cause for which all who love 
their kind must stand together in these days 
it is the family. Only as we first make the 
most of the family can we next make any- 
thing of society at large. Only as we give 
ourselves devotedly to the relationships of 
home, loving ardently, missing unspeakably 
when death intervenes, in every way loyal and 
obedient to the bonds of pure affection, shall 
we have anything to give to man or God out- 
side the family. All of Mrs. Eddy's talk 
about the love of God apart from love to 
those who have first right to our love is beside 
the mark. One would think she has never 
heard St. John's penetrating question: "He 
that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, 
how can he love God whom he hath not seen? " 

There is no such thing as abstract love. 
Love exists only in relationships. That is the 
reason why God has always been, before the 
world began, a social God, a Trinitarian God. 
It is only by becoming so ineffably dear to 
one another that the pain of one is another's 



2i6 Christian Science 

pain, the death of one another's heartbreak, 
that society can hold together. Loosen the 
family ties by transferring the affections to 
a mere abstraction by the name of Principle, 
create the suspicion that God has claims on 
any one which take precedence of the duties of 
the family, twist the words of Jesus to pur- 
poses unwarranted by exegesis or steal them 
from their context or make them contradict 
His life-long policy and His world-wide in- 
fluence in the upbuilding of the family, and 
civilisation will crumble, the family will fall to 
pieces, and any saving remnant there may 
chance to be will have to face the sore tempta- 
tion of the Gnostics who began by denying 
the existence of the flesh and ended by in- 
dulging it.^^ 

Mrs. Eddy may be right and we wrong. 
But it will require more than Mrs. Eddy's 
word to convince us, 

"who live beneath 
The shadow of the steeple; 
The parson and the parson's wife, 
And mostly married people," ^^ 

that all the tears and blood, the tragedy and 
travail of countless years to make love rule 
in the sacramental relationships of family and 



Marriage and the Family 217 

church and state, are mere illusions to be 
flung aside whenever Mrs. Eddy thinks we 
know enough to do without them. 

Furthermore, as the perilous and the per- 
nicious in the metaphysics of Christian 
Science grow more evident, public opinion, 
which always has the final word, will grow 
more insistent that Christian Scientists divorce 
their philosophy from their healing, recognise 
the hmitations of suggestion, submit their 
system to an honest scientific test, and give 
it a more modest place among the various 
forms of mental healing which are perhaps 
doing as good work as Christian Science 
without detaching people from their normal 
church relations or fooling with the funda- 
mentals of experience. 

If Christian Science, in spite of every 
warning, persists along its present course, 
public opinion will one day place it legally 
in the category where it logically belongs, 
with all those subtler types of anarchy which 
disappear when men see them as they are. 

There are three stages through which many 
of us pass who study Christian Science with 
the desire to find out what it really is. 

1. The stage in which we are somewhat 



2i8 Christian Science 

amused at its conspicuous absurdities, at 
which Christian Scientists themselves have 
been known to smile, and yet speak not against 
it because we have seen instances in which sick 
bodies and sick souls have seemed to improve 
under its influence. 

2. The stage in which we are for a time 
bewildered by the other-worldliness and seren- 
ity of many a Christian Science character and 
wonder if after all there may not be much in 
Christian Science. 

3. The stage in which after hard reading 
and honest thinking we see the structural 
weakness of its philosophy, its frequent mis- 
representations of the teachings of our Lord, 
its denial of the limitations of suggestion in 
the interest of a grotesque theory, and its 
insidious attack upon the family at the very 
source even while it inculcates many family 
virtues. 

And when we reach the third stage there 
is one thing and one only for those to do who 
feel some responsibility to " the God of things 
as they are." That is, to state the entire 
truth concerning this fatuous folly which 
seems to have a weird affinity for crude in- 
tellects and undisciplined emotions. 

Christian Science will not crush historic 



Marriage and the Family 219 

Christianity. Truth needs no caretakers. 
Truth needs only witnesses. But there are in 
every church good people, simple, honest 
and devout, who have had little or no training 
in philosophy or science. It is they whom 
Christian Science oftenest allures from their 
allegiance. It is with them in mind that every 
thoughtful reader of this book who loves his 
fellow man will lose no opportunity to explain 
exactly as it is the theory and practice of 
Christian Science until in the white light of 
pubHcity the error and the evil in it shrivel up 
and disappear, and it takes its place among 
the far too many sects which justify them- 
selves by the pragmatic quickening they give 
to souls untouched by other agencies. 

If this brings unhappiness to some who 
now find comfort in the Christian Science 
faith, there is but one word to be said, that 
duty to truth comes before the privilege of 
happiness. No comfort, no serenity, no 
peace can last which does not rest on truth. 
As a wise Englishman has said: 

Those who flinch from inquiry because they dread 
the possible conclusion; who turn aside from the 
path as soon as they catch a glimpse of an unwel- 
come goal ; who hold their dearest hopes only on the 
tenure of a closed eye and a repudiating mind, 



220 Christian Science 

will, sooner or later, have to encounter that in- 
evitable hour when doubt will not be silenced and 
inquiry can no longer be put by; when the spectres 
of old misgivings, which have been rudely repulsed, 
and of questionings, which have been sent empty 
away, will return to " haunt, to startle, to waylay," 
and will then find their faith crumbling away at 
the moment of greatest need.**^ 



NOTES 

The following abbreviations are used: S. & H. for Sci- 
ence and Health; M. W. for Miscellaneous Writings; R. & 
I. for Retrospection and Introspection; P. & P. for Pulpit 
and Press; C. S. v. P. for Christian Science versus Pan- 
theism; and C. S. invariably for Christian Science. 

The writer has made use of several editions of S. & H. 
When no date is given the edition of 1906 should be as- 
sumed. The edition of 1898 is often cited because it 
contains an excellent index omitted from recent editions 
in the interest — it would seem — of the new Concordance 
of which the selling price is five dollars. 

References to magazines, weekly journals, and daily 
papers are for the year 1907 unless another year is given. 
Where more than one book by the same author is men- 
tioned the specific reference is always to the first book 
listed in the Bibliography, p. ix. under the author's name. 

To the Bibliography should be added James's Pragma- 
tism and The Christ that is to be, which has appeared 
since the Bibliography passed into proof. 

CHAPTER I 

1. R. & I., 20. 

2. S. & H., VII. 

3. S. & H., 126. 

4. S. & H., 107. 

5. McClure's, March, 507. 

6. Manual, 3. 

7. Letters dated December 5 and 18, 1890, written by 
Mrs. Eddy. 

8. C. S. Bible Quarterly Lessons, April-June; Ex- 
planatory Note, The italics appear in the Quarterly. 

221 



222 Notes 

9. R. & I., 89. 

10. S. & H., 202. 

11. R. & I., 88. 

12. S. & H., 474. 

13. S. & H., 131-142. On his visit to Mrs. Eddy, 
August 12th, Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton found that Mrs. 
Eddy even in her earlier life had the habit of " criticising 
the older ministers." — C. S. Sentinel, Aug. 24. 

14. S. & H., 142. As the author reads these notes in 
proof a new edition of S. & H. appears in which Mrs. 
Eddy makes the passage more severe by substituting the 
word " worship " for " policy." 

15. Manual, 57. 

16. M. W., 106. 

17. S. & H., 201. 

18. McClure's, May, 103. In S. & H., 324, Mrs. Eddy 
describes the new convert to C. S. as full of " gladness to 
leave the dark landmarks and joy to see them disappear." 

19. The Christian Science Publication Committee 
(Human Life, January, 1907, p. 5) states that " the Chris- 
tian Science Church does not proselyte." Yet Mrs. Eddy 
(Manual, 79) appears by implication to encourage prose- 
lyting, except among Roman Catholics. It is a self-evi- 
dent fact that the C. S. Church is made up largely of 
" come-outers." Dr. F. J. Fluno, Christian Science Lect- 
urer, says every convert " brings ten." Every clergyman 
who has lost members of his flock to C. S. understands the 
pervasiveness of C. S. proselyting. While the policy is 
not to seem to make it easy to join the C. S. Church, the 
way is always indicated by thje constant pressure, especi- 
ally in the care of those under C. S. treatment for some 
ills, to exclude all intellectual interests except those for 
which S. & H. stands, to confine the fellowship to those 
of C. S. sympathies, and to give more thought and time 
and affection to the development of C. S. friendships than 
affinity or the fitness of things would sometimes indicate. 
While these are the facts in evidence, the author is glad 
to testify that the motive seems to be identical with that 
of the early Christians, — to drive out the old in order to 



Notes 223 

substitute a new faith believed to be the only true faith. 
Mrs. Eddy hints (S. & H., 328) that the Bible is errone- 
ously interpreted by Christian missionaries in India be- 
cause hundreds still die there every year from snake 
bites. She is apparently ignorant of the real nature of 
the work missionaries are doing everywhere. " They 
are," says the New York Evening Post, " physicians as 
well as priests. They build hospitals and administer 
them. They establish printing presses and direct them. 
They are linguists who translate a whole religious litera- 
ture into the imperfect dialect of primitive tribes. They 
are advisers at the courts of Eastern princes, and instruc- 
tors at colleges planted in regions of dense ignorance. 
They are usually in advance of traders, and find them- 
selves at length opposing the vices of civilisation on the 
one hand and those of barbarism on the other." When 
Christian Science turns its energies away from winning 
Christians to the winning of the heathen it will then be 
time enough to criticise the missionary efforts of the 
Christian Church. 

20. Cushman, 16; Newton, 2; Mark Twain, 286; Broad- 
way Magazine, May, 151; Rev. Lewis R. Bates, D.D., 
quoted in C. S. Sentinel, Aug. 10. 

21. Snyder, 2. 

22. Case. 

23. Isaiah 1:13, 14; Micah 6:8. 

24. Arena, January, 59. 

CHAPTER II 

1. S. & H., 456. 

2. C. S. B. Q. Lessons, Exp. Note. Rev. Irving C. 
Tomlinson, official representative of Mrs. Eddy, thus 
comments: "The Bible and the C. S. text-book are our 
only preachers. As the discourses are made up wholly of 
passages from the Bible and the C. S. text-book, they 
contain nothing of human opinion; they are devoid 
of man-made theories. They voice the eternal fact 
concerning the everlasting Truth. They set forth the 
realities of being; they inform, instruct, and enlighten 



224 Notes 

concerning the verities of God and man." — Reprint from 
the C. S. Sentinel, 

3. R. & I., 55. 

4. Mark Twain, 142. 

5. Manual, 31. 

6. New York Sun, Feb. 25, 1903. 

7. Mark Twain, 257. 

8. Northampton (Mass.) Herald, Feb. 16 and 18. 

9. Compare successive editions of S. & H. 

10. C. S. B. Q. Lessons, Ibid, 

11. The author has made the estimate of Mrs. Eddy's 
wealth from the affidavits, not altogether clear, filed in 
Concord, N. H., May 17 and 18, and published in the C. 
S. Sentinel of May 25. In the " Masters " interview, Aug. 
14, with Mrs. Eddy as reported in the Boston Herald, 
Aug. 15, Mrs. Eddy admitted the transfer of property 
amounting to $913,000 to trustees. This apparently does 
not include her real estate in Concord now assessed at 
$55,000 according to counsel for " next friends " in the 
recent lawsuit, and other investments which so far as the 
reader can determine are indicated in the C. S. Sentinel 
of May 25 and apparently bring her estate up to or be- 
yond the million dollar mark. The amount must be a 
surprise to Mrs. Eddy's followers as well as others; for 
in his C. S. History, published a few years ago, Judge 
Hanna after stating that Mrs. Eddy's charities from 
1896 to 1899 averaged $88,987 a year, adds that but for 
her economical habit of living Mrs. Eddy would be a 
millionaire. Her fortune at her death, the C. S. Senti- 
nel of Aug. 24 informs us, is to go to her church. 

It has been stated that there is no compulsion on 
any one to buy S. & H., and that those outside, since they 
have access to copies in the public libraries, have no right 
to criticise the author of the book for selling it at a price 
apparently prohibitive to some. The twofold reply to 
this is evident: (1) The ethical sense of the modern 
world has advanced beyond the point the C. S. Sentinel 
(quoting from the Concord Daily Patriot), Aug. 24, p. 
967, makes that " a fortune " is or can be " the logical re- 
sult of the teachings" of a great religious leader. It is 



Notes 225 

now too late in the development of the country*s ethical 
instinct to make acquisitiveness a Christian virtue. 
Christianity will not to-day consent to put a premium on 
the money-getting which Mrs. Eddy's whole career has 
illustrated in general, and her management of S. & H. has 
emphasised in particular. (2) The ethical sense of the 
modern world is now engaged in bringing to justice cer- 
tain large corporations which are extracting enormous 
profits from the pockets of the poor for the necessities of 
life. Mrs. Eddy's constant claim that S. & H. is neces- 
sary to man's well-being, to his actual existence if he 
happens to fall ill, makes the book to those who follow 
in her train as truly a necessity as food and oil are to 
the world at large. To hold her book at a price relatively 
as high as that the corporations set upon their wares is 
logically to invite the same condemnation they are now 
receiving. To solve the problem by giving copies gratui- 
tously to those obliged to plead their poverty is spiritual 
pauperisation. To send them to C. S. reading-rooms or 
public libraries is " soup-house " evangelisation. The mod- 
ern conscience is not content with the suggestion. 

For years Mrs. Eddy steadily encouraged her follow- 
ers through the pages of the Journal of Christian Science 
in giving her presents. She regularly published in its 
columns the list of presents sent her, including once " a 
21-pound turkey," again an " eider-down pillow," once 
again a " linen handkerchief." A partial list will be 
found in McClure^s, October, 689, 690; also a letter, of 
which the writer has seen the original, written by Mrs. 
Eddy in 1890 to her publisher in protest against his sug- 
gestion that she omit her list of Christmas gifts from the 
Journal. The following is her ingenious argument: 
" Students are constantly telling me how they felt the 
mental impression this year to make me no presents, and 
when they overcame it were strengthened and blessed. 
For this reason, viz., to discourage mental malpractice 
and to encourage those who beat it — I want that notice 
published." To the inference that Mrs. Eddy was solicit- 
ing presents there is but the alternative that, according 
to her theory, she was under the dominion of the obsession 



226 Notes 

of malicious animal magnetism and was therefore not 
responsible for her conduct. The italics above are Mrs. 
Eddy's. 

12. Mark Twain, 254. 

13. S. & H. (1898), 443; Cosmopolitan, March, 541; 
July, 331. 

14. Wood, 146-152; Patterson, 9-22. 

15. Wright, 17, 28, and McClure's, October. John 
Henry Wiggin was one of the cleverest and most culti- 
vated men ever in any capacity associated with Mrs. 
Eddy. From 1885 to 1890 he was her literary adviser. 
He assisted in the editing of the Journal, and rewrote S. 
& H. so that in the edition of 1886 it became practically 
a new book in form and phrase. One chapter called 
" Wayside Hints," was in thought as well as word the 
work of Mr. Wiggin. Mrs. Eddy first used it Jan. 24, 
1886, as a sermon without accrediting it to Mr. Wiggin, 
and after the service with eyes twinkling inquired of him 
in a stage whisper " How did it go? " Then she inserted 
it bodily in S. & H. adding in one paragraph two brief 
sentences in execrable taste in praise of her late hus- 
band. Through the kindness of Mr. Livingston Wright, 
the author has seen the very copies of S. & H. which Mr. 
Wiggin used in his revision, in connection with a MS, 
Mrs. Eddy furnished and therefore speaks with 
confidence. Mr. Wiggin, though discharging his full 
duty as a literary helper, never took Mrs. Eddy very 
seriously. In a letter in 1889 to a college friend he wrote 
of her as " an awfully smart woman, acute, shrewd, but 
not well read, nor in any way learned." She began to 
complain in 1890 of his " most shocking flippancy," and 
the relationship a little later was severed. 

16. Mark Twain, 289. Nothing is more remarkable 
than Mrs. Eddy's steady growth in her old age in the art 
of literary expression. She has never wearied of work- 
ing on S. & H. Not a day passes, it is said, that she does 
not, even now, put some touch on her book. Her sub- 
junctive once intractable, as is pointed out in McClure's, 
has grown obedient to her will. She no longer gives sub- 
jects to participles or antecedents to pronouns, and her 



Notes 227 

tenses now stay where they belong. There is still vague- 
ness in S. & H., but in her recent public letters, barring 
an occasional hiatus of thought, there is much to justify 
Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton's judgment of Aug. 12, that 
" her mode of expression is logical and connected." C. S. 
Sentinel, Aug. 24. 

17. Micou, 34. Professor George L. Gary calls G. S. 
" One Substance Pantheism." 

18. R. & I., 20. 

19. Irving F. Wood, preface. 

20. G. S. Sentinel, June 15. 

21. S. & H., Gh. XVII. See also the Expository 
Times, London, July, for article by Rev. H. W. Horwill 
on Mrs. Eddy's exegesis and Mr. Dixon's inadequate re- 
ply quoted in the G. S. Sentinel, Sept. 21. 

22. S. & H., 16, 533, 545, 538. 

23. Mark Twain, 335-343. 

24. Heine quoted in Farrar. 

25. S. & H. (1898), 154. 

26. S. & H. 12. 

27. S. & H. (1898), 476. 

28. S. & H. (1875), Ghs. II & IV. 

29. S. & H. (1898), 347. 

30. S. & H. (1898), 385. 

As the author reads proof of these notes there comes 
from President David Starr Jordan of Leland Stanford 
University this confirmation of his judgment: "There is 
no element of permanence in the cult. I agree neither 
with the metaphysics nor with the English of Mrs. Eddy. 
The book and her whole doctrine are unintelligible. She 
has enthusiastic followers, to be sure, and they build huge 
temples, because there are many who like that which is 
unintelligible, and those same ones like to build temples 
just for the sake of building them." — The Congregation^ 
alist, Sept. 14. 

CHAPTER III 

1. S. ^ H., 110, 107. 

2. McClure's, Dec, 1906, 217. 



228 Notes 

3. Quimby's Scrapbook. 

4. McClure's, Feb., 348. 

5. McClure's, Feb., 349. 

7. H. W. Dresser, 53. 

8. New York World, May 31, confirmed by George A. 
Quimby. 

9. Letters from Mrs. Eddy to P. P. Quimby, which 
through the courtesy of George A. Quimby, the author 
has read in full. See also McClure's, Feb. 349, 350. 

10-18. Quimby Scrapbook: McClure's, Feb. 345; April, 
613; interviews with Dr. A. M. Gushing, Messrs. H. T. 
Wentworth and Eichard Kennedy. Letters from above; 
also from Mrs. J. R. Walcott, Mrs. S. G. Crosby, and 
Mr. D. H. Spofford. Mrs. Eddy was then Mrs. Patter- 
son but elected to be called Mrs. Glover. See also Mc- 
Clure's, March, 523, 520, 524. Mrs. Eddy's explanation 
that her letters to P. P. Quimby were written while she 
was under mesmeric influence will receive small con- 
sideration at the hands of the few, who like the author, 
have read not merely the extracts from them published in 
McClure's but also the originals in full. 

19. H. W. Dresser, 120. 

20. McClure's, March, 509. 

21. S. & H. (1888), 7. 

22. After a careful study of the Quimby Scrapbook, 
which has been in the author's possession for a month 
through the courtesy of Mr. George A. Quimby, the writer 
is convinced that it alone should suffice to close the case. 

23. Sybil Wilbur in Human Life, April. 

24. Evans, 209, 210. 

25. George A. Quimby's refusal to accept Mrs. Eddy's 
proposition in the light of the Quimby scrapbook, Quimby 
manuscripts, and Mrs. Eddy's letters to Quimby, is en- 
tirely commendable as well as discreet, and incidentally 
an apt illustration of " timeo Danaos et dona ferentes." 

Edward J. Arens was once a devoted student and 
helper of Mrs. Eddy. In 1881 he published a pamphlet 
in which he quoted extensively from S. & H. Mrs. Eddy 
brought suit in 1883 for infringement of copyright. 
Arens's defense was that he had borrowed from Mrs, 



Notes ^29 



Edd/s book what she had taken largely from P. P. 
Quimby's manuscripts. Neither being able to produce the 
manuscripts in court nor having access to them for com- 
parison with Mrs. Eddy's book, Arens could not prove his 
case, and the court decided that he had violated Mrs. 
Eddy's copyright. The court did not pass upon the origin 
of Mrs. Eddy's ideas because the Quimby manuscripts were 
not in evidence, and without them the moral question in- 
volved could not be decided. Only the legal issue as be- 
tween Mrs. Eddy and Arens was, or could be, settled by 
the court. Yet Mrs. Eddy has steadily construed the de- 
cision as a " vindication in the United States court " of 
her claim to be the originator of her healing principle, 
and her English representative, Mr. Frederick Dixon, in 
The American Queen for July, echoes her claim in a para- 
graph based on evident unfamiliarity both with the 
Quimby manuscripts and the details of the trial. See J. 
A. Dresser, 58; M. W., 249; McClure's, March, August, 
September. 

26. The Committee claims to be able to support his 
statement by affidavits, and July 18th wrote the writer 
thus : " I have in my possession numerous statements and 
affidavits from reliable persons who were formerly treated 
by Mr. P. P. Quimby in 1861, and subsequent thereto. 
They invariably affirm that his treatment consisted of 
manipulations and that he never attempted to practice or 
teach any method of giving a mental treatment, and that 
he never ascribed the peculiar power he seemed to possess, 
to God. He regarded it as a natural gift and not the re- 
sult of education." Having read, as the Committee has 
not, Mrs. Eddy's letters to P. P. Quimby, the Quimby 
scrapbook, and the Quimby manuscripts, the author is 
unable to imagine any evidence, past, present, or to come, 
which can seriously affect in any way the Quimby con- 
troversy. If, however, such evidence ever comes to light 
and proves on careful examination to be pertinent, speci- 
fic, and authentic, the author will be prompt in admitting 
its significance and revising his estimate. He would like 
the reader distinctly to understand that he spared no 
effort to find all the evidence there is. If there still is 



230 Notes 

evidence not considered in this volume the fault, as his 
voluminous correspondence proves, can not be charged to 
him. He repeatedly sought permission to make a care- 
ful study of the evidence the Committee claims to possess, 
but he always sought in vain; though the Committee was 
generous in giving information on other themes. 

Mrs. Eddy has made much of Quimby's recognition of 
her aptness as a pupil and of her services to him. But 
teachers often speak in terms as glowing of their more 
promising pupils. Every right-minded teacher of the 
truth likes to regard himself as but a John the Baptist to 
the Christ that is to be. Undoubtedly Mrs. Eddy's news- 
paper tributes to Quimby did enlarge his reputation and 
bring him patients. But his son assures me that Quimby, 
like most busy men accustomed to receive effusive letters 
from the emotional, gave little heed to Mrs. Eddy's com- 
munications, and in his latter days concluded that she had 
" no identity in honesty." 

The visits here referred to in the text are the ones men- 
tioned in more inclusive terms in the Preface. 

The following unexpected letter speaks for itself: 

Belfast, Maine, 
Oct. 18, 1907. 
My Dear Mr. Powell: 

Having had the pleasure of reading so much of the 
proof sheets of your forthcoming book as relates to my 
father, I wish to express my pleasure at the way you 
have treated your subject, and also state, that the quo- 
tations you have made from his manuscripts, which you 
copied at my house", are absolutely correct, and were taken 
from his writings now in my possession. As you are 
aware, most of your extracts were written by him, prior 
to his acquaintance with Mrs. Eddy. Thinking that there 
might be some who would question the truth of your 
quotations, I have without any suggestion from you writ- 
ten this explanation which you are at liberty to use in 
any way you see fit. With kind regards, I am 

Very truly, 

Geo. a. Quimby, 



Notes 231 

27. The author has consulted many of the witnesses 
who testify in both McClure's and Human Life and in 
every instance he has been informed that McClure's ac- 
count is to be accepted. His investigation covers most 
closely the issues from January to July inclusive. 

28. Mrs. Eddy did not originate the term " Christian 
Science." Abram Cowles used it in 1840. Rev. William 
Adams in 1850 published a book entitled Elements of 
Christian Science. I have found the term in the Quimby 
MSS. See H. W. Dresser, 239, 65, and McClure's, March, 
513. 

" Science of Health " sometimes appears in the 
Quimby MSS. 

The ten quotations that follow in the parallel are from 
the MS. " Questions and Answers " which Mrs. Eddy 
used for years and habitually attributed to Quimby. A 
copy of this MS. with Mrs. Eddy's own interlineations in 
it is in the possession of Mr. H. T. Wentworth who has 
kindly shown it to the writer. It is almost word for word 
identical — the writer finds — with one of the Quimby MSS. 
written by P. P. Quimby, copied by his wife, and bearing 
a date several months before Mrs. Eddy's first meeting 
with Quimby. This MS., too, he has seen through the 
courtesy of Mr. George A. Quimby and McClure's mag- 
azine. The writer has copied from the other Quimby 
MSS. many pages of quotations which confirm those in 
" Questions and Answers," and leave no room to doubt 
that the MS. as it stands, with its introductory para- 
graphs and its interlineations is as Mrs. Eddy used to 
say, the output of Quimby's brain. Mrs. Eddy has made 
much of Quimby's failure to draw the distinction as 
sharply as she draws it between mind and matter. But 
Quimby's conception was more nearly Berkeleyan than 
Mrs. Eddy's. See James's Pragmatism, 89, and Hanna's 
C. S. History, 33. 

The quotations from S. & H. beginning with the third 
will be found in editions as follows: (1898), 543; (1881), 
169; (1898), 449; (1898), 183; (1881), 169; (1898), 491, 
513, 466, 478, 62. The "parallel" itself was first sug- 
gested by Peabody, 17ff.. 



232 Notes 

CHAPTER IV 

1. McClure'Sy Jan. 237, 238; Moll, 13ff. 

2. Mrs. Eddy's published reply to McClure*s; Human 
Life, Feb. 

3. R. & I., 20. 

4. McClure's, Jan. 237, 241. 

George Washington Glover disappears from his mother's 
life and seldom reappears till in 1907 he figures as one of 
the " next friends " in the suit of Mrs. Eddy vs, C. A. 
Frye et. al. For a while when a baby, he lived with his 
mother at his aunt Tilton's; then with the old nurse, with 
whom after her marriage he removed at the age of thir- 
teen to Minnesota. He fought through the Civil War, 
became U. S. marshal, was prospector and miner for a 
time, and settled at last in Lead, South Dakota, where his 
mother built for him and furnished, in 1902, a comfort- 
able house in which he still resides. 

Influenced, Mrs. Eddy's friends claim, by those un- 
friendly to her, he and others brought suit as " next 
friends," March 1, to gain the legal right to represent her 
in the management of her property, which they asserted 
she was incompetent to manage. The suit was earnestly 
contested. While it was in progress Mrs. Eddy gave sev- 
eral interviews to newspaper reporters in which she ap- 
peared for a woman of eighty-six to be singularly vig- 
orous in mind. The " Masters," too, had an important 
interview with her on Aug. 14th, in the presence of the 
senior counsel on each side. Two alienists of reputation. 
Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton and Dr. Edward French, en- 
gaged by Mrs. Eddy or her representatives, pronounced 
her competent to manage her affairs though their opin- 
ions were not published till after the suit was on August 
21st abandoned by the "next friends." The result ap- 
peared to be a virtual victory for Mrs. Eddy. As this 
book goes to press a book is announced by R. D. Kath- 
rens of Kansas City, claiming to give the inside history 
of the suit, but of the value of the book the author knows 
nothing. 

5. 6. New England Magazine, March, 1888; H. W. 



Notes 233 

Dresser, Chs. I and II; McClure's, Feb.; Arena, May, 1899; 
Boston Herald, Aug. 15. The facts concerning P. P. 
Quimby have been verified by his son, George A. Quimby. 

7. J. A. Dresser. Mrs. Eddy had ample opportunity 
to become familiar with Quimby's ideas. She and other 
favourite pupil-patients spent many an hour with him 
after office hours asking him questions and encouraging 
him to talk in his characteristic manner. His son gave 
me a vivid word picture of the unconventional doctor as 
in the late afternoon, wearied by the long day's work, he 
was wont to lie on his sofa in his office talking freely to 
the patients he knew best, two of whom were in those 
days copying the notes he happened then to be making. 

8. C. S. Sentinel, Feb. 16, 1899. 

There is another reason why Mrs. Eddy's claim cannot 
be substantiated. Though many of Quimby's characteris- 
tic phrases lodged in Mrs. Eddy's mind to be reproduced 
practically unchanged in her writings and to become cur- 
rent coin to-day among Christian Scientists everywhere, 
the difference in style between the Quimby manuscripts 
and Mrs. Eddy's writings is as marked as between Lin- 
coln's Gettysburg address and S. & H. The language of 
the Quimby manuscripts is direct. As one of his old 
patients writes me, " One did n't need a dictionary 
to understand Dr. Quimby." The language of S. & H. 
is as already described in Ch. II. The difference is not 
alone in vocabulary and structure of sentences but also 
in the movement of the mind. Verbosity, vagueness, and 
overstatement are the " pinions " — quoting Mrs. Eddy's 
favourite word — of her v^ngs (McClure's, Oct., 699), and 
Quimby, content to walk on the solid ground of clear and 
simple statement, never wanted to use wings. 

9. Human Life, March; McClure's, February. 

10. Dr. Cushing's affidavit is in McClure's, March, 
511. The author had a personal interview with him May 
8. See also Human Life, May. 

11. Times Magazine, March; McClure's, April, 619; 
Sept., 532; Human Life, June. 

12. The Stoughton sketch is based on correspondence 
and an interview of May 6 and its facts have been veri- 



2 34 Notes 

fied by Mr. Wentworth and Mrs. Clapp. See also Mc- 
Clure's, April, 620-622; Human Life, May. 

13. Quoted from an unpublished letter. 

14. Letters from, and interviews with Richard Ken- 
nedy; also McClure's, May and July; Human Life, June 
and September. 

15. R. & I., 71. The " strange providence " appar- 
ently was a suggestion from Richard Kennedy that stu- 
dents would probably be more willing to pay a larger 
price for tuition than to mortgage their future by prom- 
ising to pay Mrs. Eddy ten per cent, on all their future 
earnings. 

16. McClure's, May, 103-5. 

17. S. & H. (1881), Vol. II, 34. 

18. McClure's, May, 109. 

19. In Human Life, Sept., p. 14, Mrs. Eddy's explana- 
tion is give'n of her break with Mr. Spofford. She puts it 
on the ground of his business incompetency and his de- 
sire to wrest from her the C. S. leadership. 

20-22. Mrs. Eddy sometimes gives an uncommon or 
unwarranted import to ordinary words. See McClure's, 
July, 343, for instances of confusion of " immorality" and 
"disloyalty," "adultery" and "adulteration." All 
through the various editions of S. & H., she frequently 
confuses " personality " and " corporeality " and sets up 
an antagonism between " personality " and " principle " 
as unnecessary as it is hurtful to her metaphysics. See 
McClure's, July, for full account of the witchcraft case; 
also McClure's, August; and Human Life, Sept. 

23. R. & I., 60. One of several who knew Mr. Eddy 
and have given me their recollections of him informs me 
that Mr. Eddy seemed to him slow and over-cautious, 
rather than naturally dull or stupid. He thought him 
completely overawed and benumbed by his wife's 
stronger nature. Dr. Patterson died in 1896. 

24, 25. McClure's, May, 115, 116. The italics are Mrs. 
Eddy's. 

26. The post-mortem examination of Mr. Eddy made 
at Mrs. Eddy's request by a reputable physician disclosed 
"organic disease of thp heart, the aortic valve beinj^ de- 



Notes 235 



stroyed and the surrounding tissue infiltrated with cal- 
careous matter." To satisfy Mrs. Eddy the physician 
showed her the heart, and yet she still insisted that her 
husband had died of " malicious mesmerism " or " arseni- 
cal poisoning mentally administered." — McClure's, Sept., 
568 ff. See also R. & I., 60. 

27. McClure's, Sept., 572-5; Human Life, Jan.; C. S. 
Sentinel, May 23, Aug. 24; Philadelphia North American, 
July 15. 

According to McClure's, Sept., Calvin A. Frye was bom 
Oct. 24, 1845, in Frye village, now a part of Andover, 
Mass., of good New England ancestry. His father, Enoch 
Frye, was graduated from Harvard in the famous class 
of 1821, which numbered Emerson among its brightest 
stars. After attending public school in Andover he 
worked in a machine shop till in 1882 at the age of thirty- 
seven in response to a telegram he entered Mrs. Eddy's 
service, in which for a quarter of a century he has been 
engaged, it is said, without vacation. He has at times 
done her marketing; kept her books with honesty she tes- 
tifies, and the recent auditor of his accounts reports; 
written many of her letters, and, dignified New Eng- 
lander as he is, these many years clad in livery he has 
sat upon the coachman's box when she has gone out for 
her daily drive. He has been faithfulness itself to her 
and to her interests because according to his affidavit he 
has steadily believed both in her and in her theory. In an 
anomalous position, under frequent criticism and not in- 
frequent ridicule, he has for a quarter of a century hid 
behind an impassive countenance and an unbroken si- 
lence, his motives, feelings, and experiences. 

28. R. & I., 62; McClure's, Aug. 

29. Robinson, 13. The references in the preceding 
paragraph are to McClure's, Sept., 581. 

Not all who heard Mrs. Eddy in those days were im- 
pressed alike. Miss Frances J. Dyer, trained journalist, 
frequently attended C. S. services in the early eighties 
and has kindly revived for the writer's use the following 
recollections written at the time: 

Among the novel Sabbath services in this city of 



236 Notes 



heterodoxy is the gospel according to Mrs. Mary B. G. 
Eddy, the chief apostle and expounder of " Christian 
Science," so called. In Hawthorne Hall, at three 
o'clock on Sunday afternoons, an audience of some 200 
intelligent and respectable looking people assemble to listen 
to their " pastor." The exercises begin with singing a 
hymn. Then follows a moment of silent prayer, and a 
most remarkable paraphrasing of the Lord's Prayer. 
After each petition by the audience Mrs. Eddy interjects 
one of her own. For example, after the people say, " Thy 
will be done," she adds, " May the supremacy of spirit 
appear, and the dream of matter disappear." " Lead us 
not into temptation " is followed by " Deliver us from the 
errors of personal sense." The sermon on the last Sab- 
bath chanced to be an exposition of the fourteenth of 
John. The first two verses were read, and questions 
asked : " What is meant by the heart physically and meta- 
physically? " Timid voices replied, " A bodily organ " 
and " The seat of the affections." After a little prelimi- 
nary skirmishing of this sort, the speaker plunged boldly 
in medias res as set forth in a written manuscript, and 
elucidated the doctrine of original sin by stating that 
" man and God are co-existent and eternal ; losing our 
sense of this, we gain our mortal sense, and thus become 
sinners." If we listen to the realities of sin as preached 
from modern pulpits we are hell. This is metaphysics. 
When all our sense of being goes into the spiritual, then 
only do we begin to live. Our only intelligence and sub- 
stance is an apprehension of the great and eternal some- 
thingness. Jesus, the great metaphysician, whose mission 
is to turn away our thought from a personal Satan and 
a personal sinner, is simply the idea of the divine in- 
telligence which we call God, or good. Christ always em- 
ployed mental methods for bodily healing. We are what 
we think we are, and our attitude of thought determines 
our bodily condition. There is no such thing as matter — 
all in the universe is spirit. And so on, ad absurdam. 
Meetings have just been suspended, however, owing to a 
" pressure of other duties." 

The fountain head whence these amazing sophistries 



Notes 237 

are promulgated is the Metaphysical College, a chartered 
institution at 571 Columbus Avenue, and students flock 
there by the score, even at the exorbitant charge of $300 
for twelve lessons. Here may be found several other 
resident " physicians " and elsewhere in the city are a 
dozen others, most of the practitioners being women. A 
Journal of Christian Science is published every other 
month. Some of the printed testimonials therein to Mrs. 
Eddy's book, Science and Health, with Key to the Scrip- 
tures, give somewhat doubtful praise. Witness, for in- 
stance, this one from Longfellow: 

" Having so many occupations and interruptions, I have 
not found time to read Science and Health sufficiently, 
but will not on that account delay thanking you for its 
excellence." 

30. McClure's, Sept., 575; May, 1899. 

31. Arena, May, 1899. 

32. See statement of " next friends " in lawsuit. 

33. 34. R. & I., 67; M. W., 271-274; R. & I., 67-72; 
Hanna, 40; Clark, 115. 

35. P. & P.; Peabody, 40; M. W., 140. 

36. M. W., 139-143, 156; also private letter of June 
30, 1890. 

Christian Science architecture is distinctive. Calm and 
dignity, beauty and harmony are the ideals it endeavours 
to embody. Of Gothic, Christian Scientists will have no- 
thing because Gothic is too closely associated with historic 
Christianity. They go back to Athens and the Acropolis 
not only because — to quote the architect of the Boston 
Church — it is " based on a mathematical inerrancy which 
is most fascinating to analyse " but also because " the pur- 
est type of the ancient Greek temples was the outgrowth 
of a naturalistic and rationalistic religion." — S. S. Beman 
in The World To-day, June, 582-590. 

37. There are many likenesses between Mrs. Eddy and 
Mahomet in temperament, character, and career. See 
Stanley Lane-Poole, V-LV for analysis of Mahomet. 

38. Letter from the Committee on Publication, dated 
June 20. 

39. The Committee adds that "the most significant 



238 Notes 

item bearing on this point is the fact that there are 
nearly 450,000 copies of Science and Health in use. If 
there are two copies in the average family of five this 
would mean more than a million persons studying the 
book." 

Apparently, however, the Committee has for the mo- 
ment forgotten that according to the C. S. Q. Bible Les- 
sons no copy of Science and Health before the 226th 
edition can be used in following the Sunday services, and 
that there is for this reason and other reasons, constant 
encouragement given to Christian Scientists to buy new 
editions. The latest edition, published in September, con- 
taining a portrait — made many years ago — of Mrs. 
Eddy, is so alluringly advertised that every Christian 
Scientist will want to buy a copy. A Christian Scientist 
near Mrs. Eddy has in fact stoutly asserted to me that 
no one should read any but the latest editions. A con- 
siderable number of copies must be also in the libraries, 
and some at least in the hands of those whose only in- 
terest is curious or critical. 

40. For illustrations see McClure*s for the current 
year and the C. S. Sentinel, July 27, p. 910. Note also: 
"At the written request of the Pastor Emeritus, Mrs. Eddy, 
the Board of Directors shall immediately notify a member 
of this Church to go in ten days to her, and it shall be 
the duty of the member thus notified to remain with Mrs. 
Eddy twelve months consecutively or three years con- 
secutively if Mrs. Eddy requires or requests it. A mem- 
ber who leaves her in less time without her consent or 
who is discharged, shall be dropped from the Church. 
Male members who remain with her three years consecu- 
tively, shall be paid semi-annually at the rate of twelve 
hundred dollars yearly in addition to rent and board. 
Female members shall receive one thousand dollars an- 
nually with rent and board. Those members, whom she 
teaches the course in Divinity, and those who remain with 
her three years, receive the degrees of the Massachusetts 
Metaphysical College." — Manual, 66, 

41. Manual, 18, 3. 

42. Mark Twain, 209. 



Notes 239 



43. William P. Trent. 

44. Alfred Farlow. 

45. C. S. Sentinel, July 6, 852. 

46. Boston Herald, Aug. 17. 

47. Human Life, July. 

48. The case in question was that of the Aberthaw 
Construction Co. vs. Carpenters District Council of Boston 
and Vicinity and the Christian Science Church (Owners). 
The case was first referred to a " Master," Hon. Wade 
Keyes; and when objections and exceptions to his report 
were filed by the Christian Science Board of Directors, 
his decision after full argument was " unanimously sus- 
tained by the Court of Last Resort of the Commonwealth 
of Massachusetts," March 27, 1907. The report of much 
of the evidence and the court decision have been printed 
for distribution by the Master Builders Association of 
Boston in a pamphlet, loaned the author by Mr. W. L. 
Cook and closing with the following words : " The 
amount of money involved in this case was insignifi- 
cant, but the principle was great, and the decision ren- 
dered is so important and far-reaching that all parties 
concerned in industrial issues should take note thereof." 
See also editorial in the Springfield Republican, June 20. 
McClure's, August, gives other instances of litigation in 
which Mrs. Eddy has been involved from time to time. 
The explanation in Human Life, Sept., that others have 
been in every case at fault is not convincing. 

49. Private letter dated Dec. 18, 1890. See McClure's, 
Oct., 688, for instance in which Mrs. Eddy claims " divine 
origin " and, 692, for instance in which Mrs. Eddy ad- 
mits to the Journal, May, 1885, while she was actual 
editor, the following claim a disciple makes for her: 
" She existed from the beginning before all ages, and will 
not cease to exist throughout all ages," 

50. Notes to Chapter II, 2. 

51. McClure*s, Sept. 

52. New York American, Aug. 26. 

53. Punches phrase applied without disparagement to 
Mr. Gladstone as it is here to Mrs. Eddy. 



240 Notes 

CHAPTER V 

1. S. & H. (1898), 464; Sturge, 14, 15; Karl Pear- 
son's Ethic of Free Thought; J. R. Mosley in Cosmopoli- 
tan, July, 331. 

2. S. & H. (1898), 481. 

3. Cosmopolitan, July, 333. 

4. A Critic Answered, 13 if. 

5. Peabody, 29; McClure's, Aug., 457. 

6. Canon Scott Holland in Sturge, XVIII. 

7. The successive editions of S. & H. were numbered 
until the 440th appeared a few months ago. The num- 
bering was then discontinued. 

8. Lodge, VI. 

9. A Critic Answered, 16. To understand the unwar- 
ranted appropriation made by C. S. of the word " reality " 
to a special meaning, see James's Pragmatism,, 212, 244. 

10. S. & H. (1898), 110, 170, 189, 484. Since writing 
the paragraph to which this refers the author has found 
a full description of Soul Senses in a Quimby manuscript 
dated May, 1860. 

11. Frothingham, 122-127. 

12. H. W. Dresser, 97-100. 

13. Collect for first Sunday in Lent. 

14. Peabody, 34. This was verified by personal letter. 

15. S. & H., 331. 

16. Newman's Apologia, 144. 

17. A Critic Answered, 14. 

18. S. & H. (1898), 129. 

19. S. & H., 172. 

It is profitable to compare Mrs. Eddy's crude view with 
the concept of a trained scientist like Sir Oliver Lodge: 
" The popular misconception concerning the biological 
origin of man, that he is descended from monkeys like 
those of the present day, is a trivial garbling of the truth. 
The elevated and the degraded branches of a family can 
both trace their descent from a parent stock; and though 
the distant common ancestor may now be lost in obscurity, 
there is certainly in this sense a blood relationship be- 
tween the quadrumana and the bimana: a relationship 



Notes 241 

which is recognised and is practically useful in the in- 
vestigations of experimental pathology." — The Substance 
of Faith, 17. 

20. Christian Science: Humanity's Helper, 17. The 
verse which appears immediately before the quotation of 
Professor Bering's is from a poem by Professor W. H. 
Car ruth. 

21. Compare with Mrs. Ward's noble words in David 
Grieve, 402, the following doggerel Mrs. Eddy offers in 
protest against evolution: 

" Thenceforth to evolution's 
Geology, we say, — 
Nothing have we gained therefrom, 
And nothing have to pray." — M. W., V. 

22. Cushman, 58, confirms the writer's thesis in his 
forceful phrase definitive of C. S. : " It is theoretical 
moral anarchism." It has also been admitted by a promi- 
nent official of the Church that C. S. is " essentially in- 
dividualistic " in opposition to the socialistic tendencies of 
the time. See Human Life, January 4. 

23. S. & H. (1898), 223. 

24. S. & H. (1875), Ch. I. 

25. Hutchinson, 32. 

26. Wright, 18, 19. Also Ch. IV, note 26. 

27. S. & H. (1875), Ch. I. 

28. S. & H. (1898), 290. 

29. Cambridge Chronicle, Nov. 3, 1906. 

30. S. & H. (1898), 316. 

31. S. & H., 140. 

32. S. & H., 142. 

33. S. & H. (1898), 21. 

34. S. & H., 126. 

35. S. & H., 141. 

36. Prayer Book, 38. 

CHAPTER VI 

1. S. & H. (1898), 461. 

2. S. & H. (1881), I, 167; II, 97. 

3. Northampton Herald, Oct. 16, 1905. 

4. C. S. V, P., 5, 12. 



242 Notes 

5. S. & H. (1898), 7. 

6. S. & H. (1888), 50. 

7. Hutchinson, 16. 

8. Cosmopolitan, July. It is gratifying to find Mr. 
Farnsworth {Arena, July, p. 59) thus confirming the 
writer's view of the tendency of C. S. to turn to dual- 
ism : " Christian Science . . . drops upon investigation 
into a dualism because its utter inability to account for 
mortal mind and that error of mortal mind the inhar- 
monious, phenomenal world of sense, argues the exist- 
ence of an evil principle at war with God." 

9. Living Church, July 6, 339. A writer in the C. S. 
Sentinel, Sept. 21, p. 57, apparently does not endorse Mr. 
Farlow's explanation. She writes : " Principle and not 
personality is the only foundation upon which we can 
build safely." 

10. The italics are the writer's. 

11. Letter dated May 31. 

12. S. & H., 6. 

13. S. & H., XI. 

14. S. & H.r, 331. The more specific statement ap- 
pears in S. & H., 55 : "In the words of St. John, * He 
shall give you another comforter, that he may abide with 
you forever.' This Comforter I understand to be Divine 
Science." 

15. Fluno, 23. Throughout a paragraph C. S. is 
identified with the Holy Spirit. 

16. S. & H. (1898), 469: See also M. W., 63. 

17. H. W. Dresser, 109, 94. In the Quimby manu- 
script dated May, 1860, there is also a clear statement of 
the case. 

18. Quimby Scrapbook. 

19-21. S. & H. (1898), 1, 532, 229. Farnsworth in 
Arena, July, 60. 

22. C. S. Sentinel, June 15, 1899, 6. 

23. The note is dated Dec. 22, 1906, and appeared in 
the C. S. Sentinel. 

24. S. & H. (1898), 513. 

25. S. & H. (1898), 550-7. The italics are the 
writer's. 



Notes 243 

26. Searchlights, 45. Mrs. Eddy once at least calls 
Jesus the "Way-shower." See M. W., 30. 

27. R. & I., 95. 

28. S. & H., 569. 

29-31. Mark Twain, 334-8; Manual, 63. 
32. McClure's, March, 507. 
83. McClure's, July, 337. 

34. Peabody, 26. 

35. Manual, 94, reads : " If the author of the Christian 
Science text-book call on this Board for household help 
or a handmaid, the Board shall immediately appoint a 
proper member of this Church therefor, and the appointee 
shall go immediately in obedience to the call. " He that 
loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of 
me." (Matt. 10:37). 

36. M. W., 309. 

37. S. & H. (1875). 

38. Lodge, 125. 

39. S. & H., 15. Mrs. Eddy's entire theory of prayer, 
even to her warning against audible prayer, will be found 
substantially in Quimby's language in the Quimby manu- 
script dated March, 1860. 

40. Cambridge Chronicle, Nov. 3, 1906. 

41. S. & H., 16. 

42. Lodge, 129. 

43. Mt. 28:29; I Cor. 11:23-25. 

44. S. & H., 32. 

45. S. & H., 35; Arena, May, 1899, 564. 

46. S. & H. (1888), 504. 

47. S. & H., 35. 

48. S. & H., 34. For a scientific statement of the 
necessary sacramental relationship of mind and matter, 
see Thomson, Chs. IL and VIII. 

49. Cushman, 35; S. & H. (1898), 468. 

50. A Critic Answered, 19. In the Quimby manu- 
script dated July, 1860, the statement is made that God 
did not create evil. 

51. Browning's Abt Vogler. 

52. Campbell's New Theology, 52. 

53. S. & H. (1898), 7. 



244 Notes 

54. Isaiah 45:7; Genesis 1:31 and 1:18, 

55. S. & H. (1898), Index on Sin. 

56. Rev. C. E. Holmes, Ph.D. 

57. Professor Cushman (58) sums up the tendency of 
Christian Science to confuse moral distinctions in this 
way : " To deny the existence of sin is to deny the exist- 
ence of virtue; and to disallow disease is to disallow 
health. There cannot be good without ill, virtue without 
sin, health without disease, knowledge without ignorance, 
heat without cold, white without black. These are cor- 
relative terms. They are as mutually necessary as one 
pole of a magnet is to the other. To deny sin and dis- 
ease is to deny all moral distinctions whatsoever, and 
upon moral distinctions is society built." 

Professor Barrett Wendell in his France of To-day 
(177) notes the same tendency to deny facts and thus 
to confuse moral distinctions among Christian Scientists 
in his treatment of the Dreyfus case. 

The writer knows a clear-headed woman who declined 
to become a student of C. S. because she was required at 
the beginning to endeavour to persuade herself that black 
is white. 

58. S. & H. (1898), 38, 443, 486, 588, 589. 

59. Human Life, July. 

60. S. & H. (1898), 639-641; (1888), 515. 

61. Alfred Farlow in the Boston Post, July 2; S. & 
H. (1875). 

62. McClure's, May, 116. 

63. Omaha Daily News, January 7 and 8, 1901. 

64. The paragraphs above were written before Mrs. 
Eddy's disavowal, Aug. 14, of belief in the power of one 
mind to wor-k ill to another and before Dr. Allan McLane 
Hamilton, going far beyond the province of an alienist, 
declared that " the allegations concerning Mrs. Eddy's be- 
lief in * malicious animal magnetism ' are ridiculous." I 
am allowing the paragraphs, however, to stand in proof 
because the evidences presented in S. & H. (especially the 
third edition), in certain personal letters of Mrs. Eddy 
with which Dr. Hamilton cannot have been familiar, 
and in the conversations and correspondence I have had 



Notes 245 



— and Dr. Hamilton has not — with those who have known 
her during a considerable period of her career leave no 
room to doubt the large and lurid place " M. A. M." has 
had both in her outward and her inner life. If she no 
longer believes in it, Mrs. Eddy deserves to be congratu- 
lated on her escape, though late, from the thraldom of 
an actual obsession. But that in no wise alters the 
evidences of the past. See also McClure's, May to Oc- 
tober, and Boston Herald, Aug. 17, in which appear sev- 
eral significant letters. 

CHAPTER VII 

1. Hudson, 7, 8. 

2. S. & H., 107, 120. In the " Masters " interview of 
Aug. 14th Mrs. Eddy said in explanation of her healing 
system : " When I came to the point that it was mind that 
did the healing, then I wanted to know what mind that 
was. Was it the mind which was in Jesus Christ, or was 
it the human mind and human will? Then I went to in- 
vestigating spiritualism and mesmerism and hypnotism, 
to see if I could find out, and I didn't find God there; 
therefore I turned to God in prayer and said : " Guide me, 
guide me to that mind which is in Christ," and I took the 
Bible and opened it at the words, " Now go write it in a 
book." I can show you where it is in the Bible. I then 
commenced writing my consciousness of what I had seen, 
and I found that human will was the cause of disease 
instead of its cure; that hypnotism and mesmerism or hu- 
man concepts did not heal — ^they were the origin of dis-" 
ease instead of its cure; and that the divine mind was the 
healer, and then I found it through the Scripture. " He 
healed all our diseases. Go into the field, preach the 
Gospel, heal the sick," and I felt there was my line of 
labour, and that God did the healing, and I could no more 
heal a person through mortal mind or will power than I 
could heal then by cutting off their heads, and I could 
not heal them by it, for I don't know how to use will 
power to hurt the sick; I don't know how to do it." — Bos- 
ton Herald, Aug. 15. 



246 Notes 

3. S. & H., 149; (1898), 426; Oughton, 98; Alfred 
I''arlow in the Boston Herald, July 18. I give Mr. Far- 
low's report of Mrs. Eddy's statement as she recalls it as 
to stopping the bleeding of her arm. Dr. Edward Everett 
Hale, to whom she made the statement, wrote me Sept. 
27 : " Mrs. Eddy said to me that I might cut through the 
main artery of her arm and that she would stop the 
effusion of blood by an exertion of will." 

4. S. & H. (1898), 422, 423, 47, 217, 374, 375, 385,421, 
485. 

5. Snyder, 11; C. S. Legislation, 18; Broadway Mag- 
azine, May, 163; Casson, 35. 

6. Muldoon, 30. Mrs. Eddy admitted over her own 
signature in the Boston Herald, Dec. 2, 1900, that she 
allowed a dentist to use his painless method in the extrac- 
tion of her tooth. 

7. Muldoon, 31. For an important correction of Mrs. 
Eddy's reference to Berkeley, see James's Pragmatism, 
89. 

8. S. & H., 179. Absent treatment was an implication 
of Quimby's healing theory which especially appealed to 
Mrs. Eddy. After she left him in the autumn of 1862 she 
was, as I found in her letters to him, ever visualising him. 
Once she wrote that she had actually seen him spiritually 
present. Again, she besought him to visit her in his 
" omnipresence." Once she wrote of him as " Comfor- 
ter " and of his " angel visit " to her. She developed a 
truth he taught her but it was none the less a truth of his 
discovering. 

9. S. & H., 177, 178. 

10. S. & H. (1888), 451; S. & H., 401. 

11. Government, 4. 

12. S. & H., X. 

13. Osier, 382. 

14. Dr. Huber confirms my references to him and in a 
letter, dated Aug. 22, adds that he found the C. S. claims 
in the instances cited to be " pitifully without foundation." 

15. Goddard, 433-7. 

16. S. & H., VIII; (1898), 290. 

17. Oughton, 85; Casson, 180. 



Notes 247 

Mrs. Eddy says : " Sickness has been fought for 
centuries by doctors using material remedies; but the 
question arises, Is there less sickness because of these 
practitioners? A vigorous ' No ' is the response deducible 
from two connate facts, — the reputed longevity of the 
Antediluvians, and the rapid multiplication and increased 
violence of diseases since the flood." — S. & H., VIII. 

Mrs. Eddy often betrays her unfamiliarity with history, 
archaeology, geology, and Biblical criticism as in the above 
passage. But one would not press a tactical advantage. 

It is difficult, however, to withhold comment from the 
following sentence: "The census since 1875 (the date of 
the first publication of my work. Science and Health) 
shows that longevity has increased." — M. W., 20. 

18. Seaman and Suzuki in Review of Reviews, Nov. 
1905. 

19. Keen, 217-261. 

20. S. & H. (1898), 214, 622, 381, 382, 387, 388, 411. 

21. Oughton, 83. 

22. S. & H., 111. 

23. Osier, 302. It would seem pertinent also to in- 
quire whether C. S. can cure pleurisy, since in the recent 
lawsuit it was admitted, Aug. 8, that Joseph Armstrong, 
Mrs. Eddy's publisher and conspicuous supporter, was un- 
der treatment for pleurisy by a regular physician. Says 
the Boston Herald, Aug. 9, in editorial comment : " The 
turning of publisher Armstrong of the Christian Science 
coterie of officials to a physician for treatment for pleu- 
risy is as if John had been like Judas, as if Melancthon 
had left Luther to serve Leo X, as if John Knox had 
fallen under the spell of Queen Mary's blandishments and 
turned Roman Catholic, as if Asbury and Coke on arriv- 
ing in America had preached Calvinism, and as if a 
speaker at Northfield should preach agnosticism." 

24. S. & H., X. 

25. S. & H. (1898), 367, 378, 383, 416, 485. The arti- 
cle on C. S. cures in the Broadiuay Magazine for Novem- 
ber seems to the author negligible in the light of the tests 
he speaks of in the preceding paragraphs and to which 
the alleged cures have not been subjected. 



248 Notes 

26. S. & H., 110; (1898)', 42, 368, 369. 

27-30. S. & H., 515, 396, 399, 411, 412, 421. 

" Chemicalisation " is coin strange enough to come from 
Mrs. Eddy's mint. But George A. Quimby incidentally 
remarked, July 16, to the writer that his father was con- 
stantly speaking of the " chemical change " which his 
ideas produced in patients. " He never sat down by a 
patient," said his son, " but he used this phrase. Never ! " 

The writer has also found the phrase " chemical change " 
in the Quimby MSS. dated March, April, and October, 
1860, — ^two years before Mrs. Eddy's first visit to Quimby. 

31. S. & H., 427, 428. 

32. Hutchinson, 17. 

33. S. & H. (1898), 343, 358. 

34. Heber Newton, in Mark Twain, 322-7; Schofield, 
Ch. II; Huxley, 84-96; Zola's Lourdes; Oughton, 26-32. 

35. Goddard, 442-5. 

36. Goddard, 472. 

37. Goddard, 473; Moll, 389; Bramwell, 161 ff. 

38. The Emmanuel Movement was started and is to- 
day conducted by Rev. Elwood Worcester, Ph.D., D.D., 
Rector of Emmanuel Protestant Episcopal Church, Bos- 
ton, assisted by Rev. Samuel McComb, D.D. For further 
account of the Movement see The Homiletic Review, Sept.; 
The Open Court, Sept.; The New York Evening Post, 
March 30; The Congregationalist, April 6; Good House- 
keeping for March, April, Oct., and Nov.; and Harper's 
Bazaar, October. See also The Christ that is to be, 215- 
274, for detailed consideration of the possibilities and 
duties of the Christian church in healing the sick. 

The author does not discuss the possibility of the 
cure of organic diseases by suggestion. He is acquainted 
with the argument for it in Schofield's Forces of Mind, 
164, and in The Christ that is to be, 215-225. But he be- 
lieves it is too early to determine to what extent sugges- 
tion is applicable beyond the range of nervous and func- 
tional disorders. He welcomes experimentation but 
thinks it ought to be made with caution, under proper 
conditions, and that scientific tests should be applied be- 
fore and. after. The methods of C. S., especially with 



Notes 249 

children, seem to him reprehensible and deserving of state 
regulation. 

39. Goddard, 485. 

40. Ch. III. Note 24. 

41. Arthur Hugh Clough. 

CHAPTER VIII 

1. M. W., 52. 

2. M. W., 288. 

3. The latest concrete instance appeared in the fol- 
lowing open letter in the Boston Herald, July 11: 

A DIVIDED FAMILY 

To the Editor of The Herald: 

In your issue of July 5th, you published a letter from 
Mr. Alfred Farlow regarding the " Case of Prof. Hart." 
In this letter Mr. Farlow says, " The habit of charging 
one's family troubles to Christian Science or some other 
religion has become about as common nowadays as . . . 
when, in fact, these quarrels are due to a want of Chris- 
tian Science," and Mr. Farlow also goes on to say, " It 
seems to us that if there are any inviolable rights, whether 
they concern a husband or a wife, it is the individual 
choice of religion and medicine. There is no more reason 
why a husband should dominate the religious belief of a 
family than that a wife should regulate it, . . . the only 
just and perceptible means of harmony in the home re- 
garding religious beliefs is to leave each member in the 
unmolested entertainment of his own faith." 

I agree with Mr. Farlow that it is right and proper to 
leave the husband or the wife to the unmolested enter- 
tainment of their own views, but how about a family of 
children aged from 8 to 16 years; I am the father of 
such a family, and my wife became interested a few years 
ago in Christian Science. Now during all our married 
life we have had a home in which harmony reigned, our 
chief desire being to have a home for our children in every 
sense of the word, my wife has always been a devout 
Christian woman and a good mother, and I am old fash- 



250 Notes 

ioned enough to be passionately in love with her, there- 
fore when she became interested in Christian Science I 
at once took up the study of it with her, attending the 
church and lectures, following the various lessons, etc., 
etc., with the result that my wife accepted Christian Sci- 
ence in all its teachings and I rejected it, while admitting 
that the idea back of it (which is in all religions) is good. 
Then the first inharmonious note appeared in our home. 
I do not desire my children to become Christian Scientists 
and my wife does desire it with her whole heart. Who 
is to give way, my wife or myself? 

My wife has had so-called " claims " and has been in 
practitioners' hands, to whom she has explained my posi- 
tion in the matter. The practitioner failed to relieve my 
wife of her " claims " after " treating " her for a time, 
and then declined to treat her further, owing to her hus- 
band's (the writer's) thought being so much opposed to 
Christian Science. I presume this opposing thought of 
mine is another phase of malicious animal magnetism, 
which (if my presumption is correct) demonstrates the 
fact that Christian Science is not all powerful to protect 
from every evil, i. e., opposing thoughts. 

Now, it looks to me as if my family was split wide open, 
and the split getting wider, not through want of Christian 
Science, by any means, but entirely through its presence. 

Yours truly, 

Brookline, July 8, 1907. J. R. D. 

4-9. S. & H. (1875), Ch. VI; S. & H., 64, 65; M. W., 
286; S. & H., 64. 

10. St. Luke 20:34; St. Matthew 22:30; St. Mark 
12:25. See Bruce in Expositor's Greek Testament and 
Plummer in the International Critical Commentary on St. 
Luke. 

11. I Thess. 4:16 ff. 

12. " We do not question the authenticity of the scrip- 
tural narrative of the Virgin Mother, and Bethlehem 
Babe, and the Messianic Mission of Christ Jesus: but in 
our time no Christian Scientist will give chimerical wings 
to his imagination, or advance speculative theories as to 



Notes 251 

the recurrence of such events." — R. & I., 95. And yet 
in 1906 we find Mrs. Eddy writing: " Gender also is a 
quality, a characteristic of mortal mind, not of matter." 
— S. & H., 305. 

13-19. S. & H. (1875), 122; S. & H. (1881), II, 160; 
S. & H. (1888), 152, 162; S. & H. (1898), 33, 541; S. & H. 
(1906), 68, 69, 548. This reference to the butterfly and 
bee is omitted from the edition of September, 1907, but 
in its place appears a statement apparently meaning the 
same thing. 

20. Manual, 100. 

21. The writer is indebted for his facts about the Sun- 
day-school to an usher of the Boston Church who one 
Sunday morning kindly acted as his guide through the 
colossal church before the appointed hour of service. 

22. Richardson. A man formerly high in C. S. circles 
writes : " It is an actual fact that if those holding promi- 
nent positions in the church and are fired by ambition to 
rise higher in executive control are blessed with children, 
they will be looked upon with disfavour. Such domestic 
blessings are contrary to the process of spiritual refine- 
ment promulgated by the pastor emeritus. That ac- 
counts for the deploringly low birth rate among Christian 
Scientists." 

See also Edward C. Farnsworth and John B. Willis 
in the Arena for July. To Mr. Farnsworth's charge that 
the goal of C. S. is sexlessness, which Mrs. Eddy's sen- 
tence, " Spirit will ultimately claim its own, all that really 
is, and the voices of physical sense be forever hushed " 
(S. & H., 64) clearly confirms, Mr. Willis feebly cites in 
refutal various passages to prove that " virtue consists 
not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it," — 
which is not the point at issue, which is in fact a com- 
monplace of Christian ethics. 

No one can read Jane Addams's article in the Ladies* 
Home Journal, September, on "Why Girls Go Wrong" 
without perceiving the social peril lurking in Mrs. Eddy's 
unsacramental view of marriage. 

23. M. W., 289. 

24. Manual, 100. 

i 



252 



Notes 



25. S. & H. (1898), 336. 

26. S. & H. (1898), 162. 

27. M. W., 151. 

28. S. & H. (1875) 

29. S. & H. (1898), 385. 

30. C. S. Journal, April, p. 17. 

31. See Paul Elmer More (8) for picture of the perils 
of abstract affection. 

32. Arthur Hugh Clough. 

33. William Rathbone Greg, quoted in Snyder, 16. 



INDEX 



Abbott, Dr. Lyman, 19 

Abdera, 108 

Aberthaw Construction Co., 
238 

Absent treatment, 246 

Adam, and mental surgery, 
176 

Adams, C. F., 5 

Adams, Rev. Wm., 231 

Addams, Jane, 251 

Advertiser, the Portland, 40 

Agamogenesis, 211 

Ambrose, 192 

Amesbury, 69 

Amram, 120 

Anarchy, and Christian Sci- 
ence, 11, 130,134, 217,241 

Anaxagoras, 128 

Ancrum, 129 

Animal magnetism, see Mag- 
netism. 

Animals, Christian Science 
healing of, 174 

Anne, Queen, 193 

Apostolic age, 8, 10 

Arabian Nights, 91 

Architecture, Christian Sci- 
ence, 237 

Arens, E. J., 46, 80, 228 

Armstrong, Joseph, 248 



Asceticism, 204 
Athanasius, 192 
Augustine, 192 
Austen, Lady, 63, 64 

B 

Baker, Albert, 52 

Baker, Mark, 52, 53 

Baker, Mary A. Morse, 52; 

see Mrs. Eddy. 
Banner of Light, 70 
Baptism, Mrs. Eddy on, 159 
Baptists, 193 
Barker, Dr. L. F., 198 
Bede, 192 

Berkeley, 59, 109, 174 
Berne, 60, 196 
Bernheim, 60, 196 
Bible, and Science and 

Health., Ch. II; P. P. 

Quimby and, 59; on evil, 

163 
Birth, Virgin, 207 
"Black Death," 181 
Blumhardt, Parson, 193 
Braid, 51 

Brain diseases, 173 
Bramwell, 201 
Bright's disease, 174 
Brookins, Miss, 132, 157 
Brooks, Phillips, 120 



253 



254 



INDEX 



Browning, Robert, 163 
Bryce, James, 87 
Buckley, Dr. J. M., 19 



Campbell, R. J., 163 

Cancer, 172, 173, 177, 184 

Canterbury, N. H., 51 

Carruth, W. H., 126 

Catharine of Siena, 193 

Celibacy, 204 

Chalcedon, Council of, 143 

Charcot, 194 

Charlemagne, 192 

Charles II., 193 

Chase, S. P., 72 

Chemicalisation, 189 

Childbirth, and hypnotism, 
197 

Chiniquy, Parson, 193 

Choate, Mrs. Clara, 87 

Christ and Christmas, 153 

Christ, Mrs. Eddy's concep- 
tion of, 143, 191; see also 
Jesus. 

Christian Science, see Ta- 
ble of Contents. 

Christian Science Associa- 
tion, 21, 86, 151 

Christian Science Journal, 88 

Christian Science Quarterly, 
88 

Christian Science Sentinel, 88 

Christian Science versus Pan- 
theism, 137 

Christian Scientists, and 
Christians, Ch. I; total 
number of , 96 

Christians, and Christian 
Scientists, Ch. I 



Christianity, apostolic, Ch. I; 

and mental healing, 197 
Chrysostom, 192 
Church, apostolic, and men- 
tal healing, 192 
Church, Mother, in Boston, 

3, 95, 96, 103, 211 
Church, the, and Christian 

Science, Ch. I 
Civil War, 58 
Clapp, Mrs. C. I., 69, 71 
Clarkson, Judge, 168 
Clemens, S. L., 14, 15, 19, 27, 

151 
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 202, 

216 
Comforter, see Holy Ghost. 
Committee on Publication, 

99, 176, 222, 237; see also, 

Alfred Farlow. 
Comtism, 77 
Concord, Mrs. Eddy at, 74, 

94, 95, 98, 126 
Constantinople, Council of, 

143 
Consumption, 172 
Cosmopolitan, The, 126 
Cowles, Abram, 231 
Cowper, 63, 64 
Crafts, H. S., 33, 69 
Crosby, Mrs. S. G., VI, 30, 

34, 35, 46, 58, 105 
Gushing, Dr. A. M., VI, 33, 

66-68 
Cushman, H. E., 241, 244 
Cuthbert, 192 
Cyril, 192 

D 

Darwin, 125 
D'Aubign6, 193 



INDEX 



255 



Davis, A. J., 51 

Davy, Sir Humphrey, 193 

Democritus of Abdera, 108 

Demonology, Mrs. Eddy's, 
166-168 

Dentistry, 174 

Devil, Mrs. Eddy's, 166-8 

Diabetes, 185 

Diagnosis, 176, 197 

Dickens, Charles, 70 

Dionysius, 163 

Diphtheria, 172, 181 

Disease, and Christian Sci- 
ence, 172 

Divorce, 204 

Dixon, Frederick, 229 

Doctors, Mrs. Eddy on the, 
131 

Dods, J. B., 51 

Dowie, 194 

Dresser, H. W., VI, 31, 32^ 
61, 63 

Dresser, J. A., 43, 46, 61, 62 

Dresser, Mrs. J. A., 31, 46 

Drugs, Mrs. Eddy on, 131,166 

Drummond, Henry, 26 

Dualism, 139, 143 

Dubois, Dr. Paul, 60, 196 

Dunmore, Earl of, 16 

Dyer, Miss Frances J., 235 

E 

East Stoughton, 69 

Eddy, Asa Gilbert, 80-84, 
86, 152, 167, 234 

Eddy, Mrs. M. B. G., 5^^ Ta- 
ble of Contents; also, Ba- 
ker, Glover, and Patterson. 

Eddy vs. Frye et al., case of, 
16, 85 



Edmonton, 63 

Edwards Church, the, 132 

Eginhard, 192 

Eliot, Prest. C. W., 9, 129 

Elizabeth, Queen, 107 

Ellises, the, 33, 68 

Emerson, R. W., 109, 119 

Emmanuel Movement, 197 

248 
EncyclopcBdia Britannica, 112 
Ephesus, Council of, 143 
Esdaile, 197 

Estate of Mrs. Eddy, 224 
Eucharist, the, Mrs. Eddy 

on, 161 
Evans, Dr. W. F., 43, 46, 202 
Eve, and mental surgery, 

176 
Evil, see Sin. 
Evolution, 124, 125, 241 
Exegesis, 20 
Exodus, 120 



Family, the, and Christian 
Science, Ch. VIII 

Farlow, Alfred, VI, 92, 100, 
111, 114, 115, 116, 117, 
122, 124, 140, 162, 171, 
176, 249; see also Commit- 
tee on Publication. 

Farnsworth, E. C, 135, 242, 
251 

Fehling's test, 185 

Fevers, 173, 186 

Fluno, Dr., 142 

Foster-Eddy, Dr. 85, 91, 167 

Free Press, the Lebanon, 39 

French, Dr. Edward, 85, 232 



256 



INDEX 



Friendship, and Christian 

Science, Ch. VIII 
Frye, C. A., 84, 85, 92, 235 



G 



Gautama, 108 

Gender, Mrs. Eddy on, 251 

Gladstone, 182 

Globe, the Boston, 85 

Glover, G. W., 55, 232 

Glover, Mrs. Mary B., 40; 

see also Mrs. Eddy 
Gnostics. 216 
God, and evolution, 123; 

Mrs. Eddy's conception of, 

136, 150, 187, 215 
Goddard, Professor H. H., 

178, 194 
Gordon, Dr. George A., 19, 

129 
Gould, Helen, 184 
Greg, W. R., 219 
Gregory the Great, 192 
Grieve, David, 129 
Grimes, 51 



H 



Hale, Dr. Edward Everett, 

246 
Hamilton, Dr. Allen M'Lane, 

85, 222, 227, 232, 244 
Hamlet, 113, 209 
Hanna, Judge, 173, 177, 178, 

224 
Hawthorne Hall, 89 
Healing, Christian Science, 

Ch. VII 
Healing, mental, Ch. VII 
Hegel, 110 



Hering, H. S., 92, 126 

Hernia, 182 

Hilary, 192 

Hill, Rev. Edgar P., 140 

Holland, Canon Scott, 112 

Holmes, Mrs. A. L., 69, 244 

Holmes, Dr. C. E., VI, 244 

Holy Communion, Mrs. Eddy 

on, 160 /f 
Holy Ghost, see Holy Spirit 
Holy Spirit, and Christian 

Science, 142, 206 
Huber, Dr. John B., VI. 

177-180 
Huguenots, 193 
Human Life, V., 47, 112 
Hypnotism, 98, 196, 197, 200 
Hypochondria, 198 
Hysteria, 198 



Idealism of Mrs. Eddy, 20, 
138, Ch. V 

Imagination, Tyndall's scien- 
tific uses of, 120 

Incarnation, the, 142 

Independent, the, 3 

India, snake bites in, 223 

Infinite Mind, 109 

Insomnia, 198 

Irving, W., 70 

Isaiah, 163 

Isle of Dreams, the, 148 



Jacob, well of, 190 

James, Professor William, 

200, 221, 231 
Jeffersonian, the Bangor, 39 
Jerome, 192 



INDEX 



257 



Jesus, 2, 31, 114, 142, 153, 

155, 205-208, 216; Mrs. 

Eddy and, 105-107, 143; 

way of healing, 171, 189 
Job, 89, 128 
Johns Hopkins University, 

126, 198 
Johnson, Samuel, 193 
Johnston, W. A., 174 
Jordan, President David 

Starr, 227 
Journal, Christian Science, 

88, 153 
Judas, 106, 107 

K 

Kant, 109, 119 

Kennedy, Richard, VI, 34, 

46, 56, 73-75, 137, 165 
Keyes, Hon. Wade, 238 
King's Evil and Charles II., 

193 



Lanier, Sidney, 152 
Lawsuit, see Eddy vs. Frye 

et al. 
Ledger, the New York, 70 
Leonardo da Vinci, 100 
Leprosy, 172 
Libby Prison, 58 
Light Brigade, charge of the, 

5 
Lincoln, Abraham, 72 
Lodge, Sir Oliver, 114, 156, 

159, 241 
Logos, the, Mrs. Eddy's 

idea of, 146 
Lord's Prayer in Christian 

Science, 160 



Lotze, 109 

Lourdes, 194 

Love and Christian Science, 

Ch. VIII 
Luther, Martin, 193 
Lynn, Mass., 58, 66, 72, 78, 

86, 111 

M 

Macleod, Fiona, 148 

McClure's, V, 36 

McComb, Dr. S., 248 

McLellan, A., 92, 147 

McGee, Anita Newcomb, 184 

Magnetism, Animal, 51, 76, 
90, 165-168, 201; "M. A. 
M.;" see Animal Magnet- 
ism. 

Mahomet, 95 

Malaria, 185 

Man, the reflection of God, 
187 

Manila, 181 

Manual, the, 90, 97-100, 
151, 211, 243 

Mark Twain, see S. L. 
Clemens. 

Marriage and Christian Sci- 
ence, Ch. VIII 

Mary, Virgin, 149, 206 

Masons, the Free, 55 

Massachusetts Metaphysical 
College, 87, 92, 93 

Materialism, 136 

Matter and Christian Science, 
109, 115, 186 

Mecca, 95 

Medicine, 181 

"Medicine Man," the, 199 

Medina, 95 



258 



INDEX 



Mental Medicine, Evans's, 43 

Mesmer, 51, 91 

Mesmerism, see Animal 

Magnetism 
Methodists, 193 
Metaphysical College, Mass., 

87, 92, 93 
Milmine, Georgine, V, 34, 

38, 77 
Mind, Mrs. Eddy on, 109 
Mind senses, 118 
Miracles, false, 192 
Missions, Mrs. Eddy on, 223 
Mona Lisa, 100 
Moll, Albert, 201 
Moody, D. L., 26 
Moravians, 193 
More, P. E., 251 
Mormonism, 77 
"Mortal Mind," 166-168 
Moses, 120, 151, 172 
Mosley, J. R., 125, 139 
"Mother Mary," 24, 151 
Motherhood of God, 150 
Miinsterberg, Prof., 67 

N 

Nancy, Bernheim at, 60 

Napoleon, 50, 97, 107 

National Christian Science 
Association, 88, 151 

"Nature," Emerson's Ad- 
dress on, 119 

Neo-Platonists, 108 

Nero, 76 

Nestorianism, 143, 146 

Neurasthenia, 198 

Newell, Bradley, 194 

New England, influence of, 
51 



Newhalls, the, 68 

New Thought, 17, 198 

New York, Christian Science 

in, 177 
Nicaea, Council of, 143 
Nightingale, Florence, 184 
No and Yes, 137 
Norton, Carol, 173 



O 



Osier, Dr. Wm., 177, 185, 
198 



Palsy, 173, 185 

Pantheism, 20, 138, Ch. V 

Paracelsus, 199 

Paralysis, 198 

Parker Fraternity Building, 

87 
Parkhurst, Bishop, 193 
Parkyn, 195 
Patterson, C. B., 17 
Patterson, Dr. Daniel, 57, 66, 

81 
Patterson, Mrs. Daniel (Mrs. 

Eddy), 32, 40, 64 
Peabody, F. W., VI., 231 
Pharisees, 4 
Philosophy, Christian Science 

20, Ch. V 
Pickwick Papers, 70 
Pierce, Franklin, 51 
Plants, Christian Science 

healing of, 174 
Plato, 108 
Pleasant View, 95, 98, 99, 

124, 184, 212 



INDEX 



259 



Pleurisy, 248 

"P. M. Society," 90 

Poe, E. A., 167 

Poisons, and Christian Sci- 
ence, 175 

Pomponazzi, 199 

Portland, Maine, 59 

Post, the Boston, 36 

Poyen, Charles, 51, 60 

Prayer, Mrs. Eddy on, 155 

Presbyterians, 193 

Principle, 136, 214 

Proselyting, 6, 7, 222 

Publication, Committee on, 
15, 46, 47; see Farlow 

Puritans, 193 



Q 



Quimby, George A., VI, 71, 
228, 230 

Quimby, P. P., 59, 74, 75, 
106,119,139, 143-145,165, 
193, 201, 229, 233, Ch. Ill 

Quimby, Mrs. P. P., 38 



R 



Rainsford, W. S., 129 

Reality, in Christian Science, 
116 

Reformation, the, 193 

Religion of Christian Science, 
Ch. VI 

Revelation, Book of, 148 

Rheumatism, 186 

Richelieu, 107 

Rochester Rapping Spiritual- 
ism, 32 

Rome, 9 



Roosevelt, Theodore, 129 
Russells, the, 33, 68 
Russo-Turkish War, 182 



Sacraments, the, 159 

St. Anne, 193 

St. James, 26 

St. John, 215, 242 

St. Luke, 208 

St. Mark, 208 

St. Matthew, 208 

St. Paul, 26, 28, 145, 159, 

162, 208 
Salem witchcraft, 80 
Sanbornton Bridge, 53 
Sargeant, Mrs. Laura E., 92 
Satan, Mrs. Eddy on, 167 
Schlatter, 194 
Schrader, 194 
Science and Health, Ch. II 
Scrofula, 193 
Senses, soul, 118 
Sentinel, Christian Science, 

88, 147 
Seward, W. H., 72 
Shakers, the, 51, 52 
Siena, Catharine of, 194 
Sin, in Christian Science, 162 
Small-pox, 172 
Smith College, 132, 133 
Smith, Judge C. P., 174 
Snake bites in India, 223 
Soul senses, 118 
South worth, Mrs. 70 
Spanish- American War, 182 
Spenser, 198 
Spinoza, 109 
Spirit senses, 118 
Spiritualism, 32 



20O 



INDEX 



Spofford, D. H., VI, 34, 45, 

78-81, 82, 148, 152, 165 
Springfield, Mass., 116 
Stanton, Edwin M., 72 
Stetson, Mrs., 177, 178 
Stone, 51 

Stoughton, Mass., 69, 119 
Straus, 161 

Suggestion in mental heal- 
ing, 197-200 
Suicidal tendencies, 198 
Supreme Court, Mass., 103 
Surgery, 176, 182, 196, 197 
Swampscott, Mass., 68 



Taft, W. H., 129 

Theology of Christian Sci- 
ence, Ch. VI 

Therapeutics, Mental, Ch. 
VII 

Thessalonians, 208 

Thibet, 132 

Tityrus, 123 

Tilton, N. H., 53, 55 

Tomlinson, Rev. Irving C, 
92, 223 

Town, Dr. F. L., 40 

Transcendentalists, the, 109 

Trent, W. P., 100 

Trinity, the Christian Sci- 
ence, 142 

Trinity Church, Boston, 120 

Trommer's test, 185 

Tuckey, C. Lloyd, 201 

Tumors, 185. 186 

Tyndall, Prof., 120 

Typhoid fever, diagnosis of, 
177, 181, 193 



U 



Unity, Mrs. Eddy's search 
for, 136 

"Universal Substance," Spi- 
noza's, 109 

V 

Van Rhenterghem, 195 
W 

Walcott, Mrs. J. R., VI, 33, 
46 

Waldenses, 193 

War, Civil, 58: Russo-Turk- 
ish, 182; Spanish- Amer- 
ican, 182 

War in Heaven, 91 

Ware, the Misses, 60, 61 

Websters, the, 69 

Weissman, 125 

Welles. Mrs. Benjamin, VI 

Wentworths, the, VI, 34, 46, 
69-72 

Wheelers, the, 68 

White House, the, 9 

Wiggin, Rev. J. H., 38, 166. 
226 

Wilbur, Sibyl, 47, 48 

Will, the, in Christian Sci- 
ence, 165 

Willis, John B., 250 

Wilson, H. Cornell, 92 

Wilson, Woodrow, 129 

Wisdom, P. P. Quimby on 
the, 144 

Witchcraft, the modern Sa- 
lem, 80 

Wolsey, Cardinal, 107 

Wood, Henry, 17 



INDEX 



261 



Worcester, Dr. Elwood, 17, 

19, 249 
Wright, Livingston, VI, 226 



Yellow fever, 181 



Young, Bicknell, 116, 117, 
122, 137 



Zend-Avesta, 108 



i 



A tnarsbalUng of the evidence pro and con, 
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